Please let us keep our abilities on sync down

I honestly enjoy having to do different rotations based on level sync, though I do find ARR~HW being way too barebones for most jobs so I'd like that to be addressed. It's surprising how well off PCT is in that regard, while VPR doesn't feel okay until lv100, especially after gnashing fang's removal.

Also I mentioned this in the last thread discussing this, but one sorta silly problem I have with skills being permanently learned is that I'll never be able to use Stone and Aero with WHM again and be eternally stuck with light and flower spells, or never be able to hear that satisfying Ding with SMN's Fester.

Whether it's feasible or not (most likely not) I wish we could just experience each patch's content with the skillsets each job had during their major patch cycle, so ARR content with 2.x skillsets, HW with 3.x, and so on.

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Originally Posted by Deniza

I don't use a parser to even know how much damage anyone does in a dungeon or raid, nor do I care about that.

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If there's people who unironically do this I'd be concerned for them.

I don't know if they need to do that, but it would be nice to get some abilities earlier--like 10 levels earlier. Not having AoE in early dungeons is rough. BLM is boring as hell without Fire IV. And don't get me started on what leveling Dragoon through ARR feels like.

Honestly, let us have full buttons set by 50. It’s ridiculous it now takes 100 levels to get the same amount of buttons pretty much every expansion had by its end originally. It thinned out the previous ones so much it is sometimes barely anything resembling a job. And this keeps on for ages.

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Originally Posted by SongOfTheWind

Honestly, let us have full buttons set by 50. It’s ridiculous it now takes 100 levels to get the same amount of buttons pretty much every expansion had by its end originally. It thinned out the previous ones so much it is sometimes barely anything resembling a job. And this keeps on for ages.

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VPR is one of the worst offenders, and it's a new job. The job is barebones as hell until like 95 (or whenever the continuation rotation is. All I know is it's somewhere in mid-late DT)

Wouldn't that just trivialize lower level content even more? I mean, would love for this, but the devs have absolutely refused to properly balance older content since Heavensward so people couldn't just cheese through it. The Crystal Tower raids are the biggest example of the devs unwillingness to keep old content from being completely steamrolled.

Soon as you figure out how to balance Benediction to not be overpowered compared to new players without it, we'll take it into consideration.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Soon as you figure out how to balance Benediction to not be overpowered compared to new players without it, we'll take it into consideration.

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Astrologian gets Benediction with a shorter cooldown at level 15.

Rather than jury rigging a 100 different combinations of balance for every job like some suggest.....why not just.....make lower level jobs less garbage to play?

Kinda seems like people miss the forest through the trees here.

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Originally Posted by undull1

Rather than jury rigging a 100 different combinations of balance for every job like some suggest.....why not just.....make lower level jobs less garbage to play?

Kinda seems like people miss the forest through the trees here.

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You are making a vague suggestion of "just make jobs less garbage to play" without offering any method to actually do that. The reality is that almost every solution will result in those 100 different combinations of balance per job.

If we want a simpler solution it would just be to let people not lose their abilities and adjust the numbers instead. This would require a lot of playtesting and finetuning though, so we are right back to complicated solutions.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Soon as you figure out how to balance Benediction to not be overpowered compared to new players without it, we'll take it into consideration.

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Benediction is hilariously one of the worst examples as it’s quite possibly WHM’s worst oGCD

If you compare it to any other healer skill with a 3 minute CD benediction looks hilariously weak

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Originally Posted by undull1

Rather than jury rigging a 100 different combinations of balance for every job like some suggest.....why not just.....make lower level jobs less garbage to play?

Kinda seems like people miss the forest through the trees here.

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And how do you figure this isn't complicated? You'd have to redesign every job every single expansion just to give the cool shit by level 15 and give you nothing but fluff from that point on if you want to keep the low level play experience engaging. It really is much simpler to just adjust the numbers and not have to go through and adjust every skill for every job in terms of what level they're obtained. There really isn't a way to keep low level play engaging while locking abilities behind leveling, as you're clearly going to be missing 90% of your kit when forced into a level 15 dungeon. I doubt people would be happy getting nothing but ability upgrading traits that change the look of a skill and give it 10 higher potency for a 100 levels either.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

It's not 'easy' to get it to feel as best as you can, but it is irrelevant how big the potency was because you'll be snacking it all with reductions. Yes I'm aware some potencies are big. This feature is seen in other MMOs, so we've seen it at work. This isn't voodoo math. I still strongly doubt they will have long lasting value in the idea of making the kits feel good at lower levels by redoing them. They have already shown it doesn't work essentially, each expansion it wrecks into lower content. They'll do all this work and then a couple expansions, poof.

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I think one of the key points you missed was burst potential, which I did gloss over, so I will elaborate here.

If we take a level 50 PLD, for example, it's AoE rotation is Total Eclipse > Prominence, for a total of 270 potency, or, 135 potency per GCD.

If we then get to level 72, and add Magic Circle, that would bring the total potency up to 470, or ~157 potency per GCD. We could reduce the damage from this combo by ~14% and it will do the same average potency. Ok, we are still in simple maths here.

We hit level 80 and get Confiteor, how do we balance against that? That is 920 potency, every minute. You could reduce it by the ~14%, and get ~791 potency. We are still almost 6 times as strong (3 times as strong for anything other than the main target) as the unmodified combo from level 50. But that isn't the end, we have the Requiescat buff up, I also have charges for 3 Holy Circles at 300 potency each (DM is 200 potency), which is something I didn't mention at level 72.

Level 90 we then get the rest of the blade combo, further pushing the damage up 400+, 500+, 600+ damage compared to Holy Circle, add in Blade of Honor at level 100 for another 1000 potency. The value of this burst just gets higher and higher. It creates a massive gap between the sustained damage and the burst damage. If you were to just calculate a flat % damage reduction on everything, you end up with weaker lows and still really strong highs.

We then have oGCDs, how do you factor in the extra damage gained by them? How about if it goes from single target (Spirit's Within) to AoE (Expiacion)? How about things like Kassatsu where you replace a 650 potency Raiton with a 1300 potency Hyosho Ranryu (which might actually be 1690 if it gets affected by the Kassatsu damage buff).

This is not a simple case of just reducing damage by a fixed %, there is a lot you need to consider that do not necessarily scale well that you would need to adjust for.

As for making the low level experience better, that sounds like a much easier task, especially if we consider many jobs really haven't changed that much since base ARR. PLD was always a 123 job with the only use for Riot Blade back in ARR was to replenish MP if you flashed too much. You were better off getting aggro, then rotating around the targets with your single target combo to keep enmity. Yes, there was Shield Swipe, but noone really cared for it, it wasn't even a DPS gain in ARR IIRC and I made use of the pacify in 1 instance, and that is Ifrit Hard.

Monk, same base combo, still have perfect balance, all Monk has really lost is Touch of Death, Blood for Blood and Internal Release (the fists were set and forget). Steal Peak and Howling Fist I think would get in the way at later levels due to Brotherhood, so making them low level Chakra spenders was a good move. However, we could also bring back the fists as low level riddles. Fists of Earth could just be the damage reduction, with Riddle of Earth giving the regen and Earth's Reply, Fists of Wind could be a 25% reduction to AA delay, upgrading to 50% for Riddle, Fists of Fire could be a 5% increase, upgraded to 15% for Riddle. Add in Celestial Revolution as an early Masterful Blitz for the Perfect Balance finisher, upgrading at level 60 to include the Lunar/Solar Nadi interaction.

With a couple of changes, we have made a solid Monk foundation for level 50. Balance this damage and leave it. Once you get to level 60, balance again, if you need to change potencies, make a trait that increases the damage. That then doesn't mess with the balance that has already been made at lower levels. Monk is a bit lean on things between 54 and 60, so you can put that trait in there (level 56) and make level 58 the upgrade to Fists of Earth to Riddle of Earth, leaving Earth's Reply at 64.

This job is now better at low levels, it has been built in a way where syncing down isn't as detrimental, it has all been balanced and ultimately, it is just going to be a better experience for the low level players as well. Considering this is one of the main complaints, that jobs don't feel fun at low levels, even for newer players. Take the time to improve it. Tey shouldn't have the rotations we have at level 100, they would be far too much, but they do need a solid foundation in order to build everything up from.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

I think one of the key points you missed was burst potential, which I did gloss over, so I will elaborate here...

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Which does only really matter in Ultimates and at the end can also be adjusted with numbers changing through the sync system. If they where to make a compromise and "just" adjust the leveling experience, which I don't think is such an easy feat to begin with, and I still won't have all the abilities that I have at the level I am currently at. Then I still would have 0 interest in running low level content.

Like many mentioned before other MMO's that managed that syncing more or less in a great way but they managed it so that content is enjoyable and you are not punished for getting synced down.

And after all I don't think we should really be trying to math out if its possible. We are not the devs. The only thing we can do is to voice what we want and the devs, if they even read the forum then see if they can implement it, if it is even on their prio list and then if the previous if's are all aligned. They think about how to implement it. And I'm pretty sure all the math we do won't matter for them as they got their systems that they know more about than we do and they will reach a conclusion on how to do stuff.
If it weren't that case I think the game would be shut down already.

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Originally Posted by Buttobi

You are making a vague suggestion of "just make jobs less garbage to play" without offering any method to actually do that. The reality is that almost every solution will result in those 100 different combinations of balance per job.

If we want a simpler solution it would just be to let people not lose their abilities and adjust the numbers instead. This would require a lot of playtesting and finetuning though, so we are right back to complicated solutions.

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Fine, bare with me as I'm phone typing so long paragraphs aren't gonna be easy and this will come out as a scattered ramble.

A lot of jobs are basically incomplete until lvl70, missing core parts of what their final lvl100 state will be. Off the top of my head, Paladin, Dark knight, Gun breaker, Reaper, Summoner and Dancer all feel painfully lacking in ARR and HW content (Summoner has maybe a single OGCD that matters added from lvl 26 to 86......let that sink in).

Many of these jobs have room for more skills to be added and removed actions that could be reimagined as different skills for cost-saving.

For example, condense some of the 60-80 skills into 40-60 lvls then add some more niche skills to the 60-80 range. I would argue that more focus should be put on making higher level skills situational skills usable outside of the normal rotation for better player skill expression (e.g. red mages reprise, monks six sided star, machinists flamethrower), the sort of stuff that is not ALWAYS the best answer but when used smartly can be a DPS/Utility gain.

To put it as a food metaphor, rather than cramming the plate with even more meat, give us some potatoes alongside the core of the meal.

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Originally Posted by Deniza

Which does only really matter in Ultimates and at the end can also be adjusted with numbers changing through the sync system. If they where to make a compromise and "just" adjust the leveling experience, which I don't think is such an easy feat to begin with, and I still won't have all the abilities that I have at the level I am currently at. Then I still would have 0 interest in running low level content.

Like many mentioned before other MMO's that managed that syncing more or less in a great way but they managed it so that content is enjoyable and you are not punished for getting synced down.

And after all I don't think we should really be trying to math out if its possible. We are not the devs. The only thing we can do is to voice what we want and the devs, if they even read the forum then see if they can implement it, if it is even on their prio list and then if the previous if's are all aligned. They think about how to implement it. And I'm pretty sure all the math we do won't matter for them as they got their systems that they know more about than we do and they will reach a conclusion on how to do stuff.
If it weren't that case I think the game would be shut down already.

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This. When other MMOs manage it just fine, there's no reason whatsoever that XIV can't do the same. I don't want to hear a single made up excuse as to why it "can't be done". It is not our job to think of ways to fix it, the devs can do the calculations, they get paid to work on the game.

It benefits everyone to make jobs fun to play in all content so I think it really would be a big boon for the game and help revitalize old content. It could even give us other wonderful QoL benefits like maybe getting rid off having to manually sync for lower level fates, just auto sync your stats when you enter a fate area (maybe add like a few second countdown on it if a fate spawns on top of you) since there's no need to mess with what skills are available and tanks wouldn't always have to put their tank stance back up every single time they're forced to sync down.

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Originally Posted by Azurarok

Whether it's feasible or not (most likely not) I wish we could just experience each patch's content with the skillsets each job had during their major patch cycle, so ARR content with 2.x skillsets, HW with 3.x, and so on.

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There've been way too many fundamental changes for that. Imagine rolling MNK back from nadis to Greased Lightning stacks, for example. AST has had 3 or 4 very different versions of the card system, and every expansion between major reworks still had smaller revisions.

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Originally Posted by undull1

Fine, bare with me as I'm phone typing so long paragraphs aren't gonna be easy and this will come out as a scattered ramble.

A lot of jobs are basically incomplete until lvl70, missing core parts of what their final lvl100 state will be. Off the top of my head, Paladin, Dark knight, Gun breaker, Reaper, Summoner and Dancer all feel painfully lacking in ARR and HW content (Summoner has maybe a single OGCD that matters added from lvl 26 to 86......let that sink in).

Many of these jobs have room for more skills to be added and removed actions that could be reimagined as different skills for cost-saving.

For example, condense some of the 60-80 skills into 40-60 lvls then add some more niche skills to the 60-80 range. I would argue that more focus should be put on making higher level skills situational skills usable outside of the normal rotation for better player skill expression (e.g. red mages reprise, monks six sided star, machinists flamethrower), the sort of stuff that is not ALWAYS the best answer but when used smartly can be a DPS/Utility gain.

To put it as a food metaphor, rather than cramming the plate with even more meat, give us some potatoes alongside the core of the meal.

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Sounds like a decent solution. I will not pretend my solution is the best one, there are many ways to tackle this problem. I just think between your proposed solution and mine, both of them are very time intensive to implement. Personally I want SE to take the time to rework this part of the game so whichever solution they go with, I will give it a chance.

Lowering the Level you get xyz Skill isnt the Solution either, the only real Solution is literally do let us keep our Skills in every cirumstance, i mean one of the most important things to improve is to learn your rotation and to use your rotation in certain situations be it a Dungeon, a Raid a Trial or anything but you cant even use your full Rotation in 95% of the Content avaible in the Game with this change it would even improve with the time the skill player have because they will always have acces to the Skillset in every situation.

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Originally Posted by Sheriyana

It benefits everyone to make jobs fun to play in all content so I think it really would be a big boon for the game and help revitalize old content. It could even give us other wonderful QoL benefits like maybe getting rid off having to manually sync for lower level fates, just auto sync your stats when you enter a fate area (maybe add like a few second countdown on it if a fate spawns on top of you) since there's no need to mess with what skills are available and tanks wouldn't always have to put their tank stance back up every single time they're forced to sync down.

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This is a great point that I didn't even think of at all. Fating in lower level content is so annoying with the current system. And like you mentioned tanks as example loosing the tanks stance, so are all other jobs as well loosing every buff they previosely added before the sync, due to the level change also syncing down the abilities and everything. If that wouldn't happen, then dancers for example also wouldn't have to constantly dancepartner again and so much more.

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Originally Posted by AvoSturmfaust

Lowering the Level you get xyz Skill isnt the Solution either, the only real Solution is literally do let us keep our Skills in every cirumstance, i mean one of the most important things to improve is to learn your rotation and to use your rotation in certain situations be it a Dungeon, a Raid a Trial or anything but you cant even use your full Rotation in 95% of the Content avaible in the Game with this change it would even improve with the time the skill player have because they will always have acces to the Skillset in every situation.

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Another great point that I didn't think of. XD

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

I think one of the key points you missed was burst potential, which I did gloss over, so I will elaborate here.

If we take a level 50 PLD, for example, it's AoE rotation is Total Eclipse > Prominence, for a total of 270 potency, or, 135 potency per GCD.

If we then get to level 72, and add Magic Circle, that would bring the total potency up to 470, or ~157 potency per GCD. We could reduce the damage from this combo by ~14% and it will do the same average potency. Ok, we are still in simple maths here.

We hit level 80 and get Confiteor, how do we balance against that? That is 920 potency, every minute. You could reduce it by the ~14%, and get ~791 potency. We are still almost 6 times as strong (3 times as strong for anything other than the main target) as the unmodified combo from level 50. But that isn't the end, we have the Requiescat buff up, I also have charges for 3 Holy Circles at 300 potency each (DM is 200 potency), which is something I didn't mention at level 72.

Level 90 we then get the rest of the blade combo, further pushing the damage up 400+, 500+, 600+ damage compared to Holy Circle, add in Blade of Honor at level 100 for another 1000 potency. The value of this burst just gets higher and higher. It creates a massive gap between the sustained damage and the burst damage. If you were to just calculate a flat % damage reduction on everything, you end up with weaker lows and still really strong highs.

We then have oGCDs, how do you factor in the extra damage gained by them? How about if it goes from single target (Spirit's Within) to AoE (Expiacion)? How about things like Kassatsu where you replace a 650 potency Raiton with a 1300 potency Hyosho Ranryu (which might actually be 1690 if it gets affected by the Kassatsu damage buff).

This is not a simple case of just reducing damage by a fixed %, there is a lot you need to consider that do not necessarily scale well that you would need to adjust for.

As for making the low level experience better, that sounds like a much easier task, especially if we consider many jobs really haven't changed that much since base ARR. PLD was always a 123 job with the only use for Riot Blade back in ARR was to replenish MP if you flashed too much. You were better off getting aggro, then rotating around the targets with your single target combo to keep enmity. Yes, there was Shield Swipe, but noone really cared for it, it wasn't even a DPS gain in ARR IIRC and I made use of the pacify in 1 instance, and that is Ifrit Hard.

Monk, same base combo, still have perfect balance, all Monk has really lost is Touch of Death, Blood for Blood and Internal Release (the fists were set and forget). Steal Peak and Howling Fist I think would get in the way at later levels due to Brotherhood, so making them low level Chakra spenders was a good move. However, we could also bring back the fists as low level riddles. Fists of Earth could just be the damage reduction, with Riddle of Earth giving the regen and Earth's Reply, Fists of Wind could be a 25% reduction to AA delay, upgrading to 50% for Riddle, Fists of Fire could be a 5% increase, upgraded to 15% for Riddle. Add in Celestial Revolution as an early Masterful Blitz for the Perfect Balance finisher, upgrading at level 60 to include the Lunar/Solar Nadi interaction.

With a couple of changes, we have made a solid Monk foundation for level 50. Balance this damage and leave it. Once you get to level 60, balance again, if you need to change potencies, make a trait that increases the damage. That then doesn't mess with the balance that has already been made at lower levels. Monk is a bit lean on things between 54 and 60, so you can put that trait in there (level 56) and make level 58 the upgrade to Fists of Earth to Riddle of Earth, leaving Earth's Reply at 64.

This job is now better at low levels, it has been built in a way where syncing down isn't as detrimental, it has all been balanced and ultimately, it is just going to be a better experience for the low level players as well. Considering this is one of the main complaints, that jobs don't feel fun at low levels, even for newer players. Take the time to improve it. Tey shouldn't have the rotations we have at level 100, they would be far too much, but they do need a solid foundation in order to build everything up from.

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My immediate if was hired to be lazy is look at what id expected and then set a formula for floors and ceilings and curved in between. For example on burst, your issue is less if we are placing a ceiling. Level 30 has a burst of 500, level 90 has a burst of 900, ceiling the 900 and start to curve the rest of the job within the two bounds so we reach the approximate goal of potency per action / dps. If being lazy this would all be automatic too lol "why is my AOE 106 potency?" "Excel dictated it. :3"


It's not going to be perfect, but it is also currently not perfect. So you're breaking eggs to make an omelette either way. In my view keeping the job as fun as possible to play is worth some wonk in potency scaling, as currently it's pretty bad feeling.


Hell, we could make it optional in a menu. Would you like to be scaled down, potentially having a slight nerf to potency but increased features, or a very bare bones, no touchi my potency and lack of depth kit? "We don't care, they're similar enough for us".


Being hyper exact is only really important when playing the can't be epic echo'd content, since echo is already taking a giant dunk on the balance. In that content, they could freeze time and give you literally the kit that was made for that content, if they wanted to be that strict on it lol.

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Originally Posted by AvoSturmfaust

Lowering the Level you get xyz Skill isnt the Solution either, the only real Solution is literally do let us keep our Skills in every cirumstance, i mean one of the most important things to improve is to learn your rotation and to use your rotation in certain situations be it a Dungeon, a Raid a Trial or anything but you cant even use your full Rotation in 95% of the Content avaible in the Game with this change it would even improve with the time the skill player have because they will always have acces to the Skillset in every situation.

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This is one of the reasons why I keep advocating for it too. Like how are you supposed to practice your rotation in actual content when 95% of content forces you to sync down and make you unable to use a portion of your kit.

This subject has come up a lot since Endwalker. I created a similar thread in September and cited a few reddit sources with the same discussion.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...very-expansion

In short, a lot of people find level sync in its current form insufferable. While the opposition have valid points about the balance of the content with full abilities, something does need to be done. You can improve the new player experience all you want, but it's the older players you need in order to populate roulettes.

I will only speak on my own experience, but I know I'm not alone. I no longer touch synced content at this point pre-Shadowbringers. If I'm doing Wondrous Tales, then I'm unsyncing and solo'ing most of it. As much joy as I get from helping new players, syncing is dreadfully boring.

Follow-up comment... a number of opposing viewpoints rightfully bring up the issue of potencies for high-level abilities.

For the last few expansions, SquareEnix has been using the trait system in order to facilitate abilities turning into other abilities and gaining potencies. If SE wants to build a better infrastructure for level sync, they can utilize traits that cull the potencies of attacks when used in different level brackets. To make up for the gain from high-level oGCD attacks, they can trim the difference between required item level and what the item level actually syncs to for individual duties.

In b4 "but that takes too much work!" Get out of here, they spent an entire expansion just changing the game's graphics a little. They can invest in the playability of their game.

They're fine with giving viper 2 buttons to press until level 55 so I'm not holding my breath.

"Just please think about those new free trial accounts that wants to experience the marvelous ARR battle system in Sastasha for first time, yes a dungeon from a decade ago YOU MUST lose 95% of your kit and press 1-2 for straight 30 minutes, this game ISN'T for you my dear veteran player".

The worst is that a huge amount of content you'll see in most roulettes will be lv.50.
Alliance Raid, Trials, 'High End' Dungeons, Levelling.

Especially awful with Alliance Raid cause the roulette is like 85% Labyrinth, CT or WoD.

So most of the time you'll sit there with your lv.50 kit.
And for most jobs lv.50 rotation is awful.

I am currently leveling BLM from 90 to 100 and had (of course) WoD in Alli Roulette and BLM at lv.50 feels like utter shit. The only one that comes close in absolute awfulness is VPR at lv.50.
If I do not level and do roulettes and play VPR and get lv.50 content I leave if it's 8-man or 24-man.
Cause I just can't do it with VPR without falling asleep.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Benediction is hilariously one of the worst examples as it’s quite possibly WHM’s worst oGCD

If you compare it to any other healer skill with a 3 minute CD benediction looks hilariously weak

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See, but, the example isn't there to serve as a "this is powerful, how do you balance" question.

The example still works just fine in context of everyone that says "all they need to do is adjust potencies" or "just scale the numbers."

There is no scaling here. The skill is literally "restore all HP." Sure, at low levels, small HP pools, there's probably a dozen skills that will do the same thing, all from varying levels.

But the point remains, it serves as an example, and only just one, of a skill that doesn't rely on any potencies, and couldn't be easily scaled.
The point remains that this suggestion is never as simple as everyone making it seems to think. When the devs' clear intent is to keep a level and balanced playing field in synced duty content, it's never going to work to have players with access to more and varied skills than the newer players they may be paired with.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

See, but, the example isn't there to serve as a "this is powerful, how do you balance" question.

The example still works just fine in context of everyone that says "all they need to do is adjust potencies" or "just scale the numbers."

There is no scaling here. The skill is literally "restore all HP." Sure, at low levels, small HP pools, there's probably a dozen skills that will do the same thing, all from varying levels.

But the point remains, it serves as an example, and only just one, of a skill that doesn't rely on any potencies, and couldn't be easily scaled.
The point remains that this suggestion is never as simple as everyone making it seems to think. When the devs' clear intent is to keep a level and balanced playing field in synced duty content, it's never going to work to have players with access to more and varied skills than the newer players they may be paired with.

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By my point is simply the fact that benediction is so weak WHM could have it at level 1 and it would change nothing. Because the skill isn’t worth anything.

I get your point is “you can’t scale infinite HP restoration” but benediction is literally the only skill that functions like this (RIP ARR lustrate) and it’s so weak in the grand scheme of things it’s literally meaningless to even consider it as a noticeable factor

All other skills either scale from potency or from health of the user/target.

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

By my point is simply the fact that benediction is so weak WHM could have it at level 1 and it would change nothing. Because the skill isn’t worth anything.

I get your point is “you can’t scale infinite HP restoration” but benediction is literally the only skill that functions like this (RIP ARR lustrate) and it’s so weak in the grand scheme of things it’s literally meaningless to even consider it as a noticeable factor

All other skills either scale from potency or from health of the user/target.

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Hallowed Ground

I was not limiting my examples to healing only. It just serves as the most obvious.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Hallowed Ground

I was not limiting my examples to healing only. It just serves as the most obvious.

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This game has (if i counted right) 99 dungeons. 12 of those are below level 50, which means those 12 are the only dungeons where both Bene and Hallowed are not available. And with how fast you skip level 1-50 already anyhow, i am not sure if there is an argument to be made here. Skills like Nascent Flash are actually worse, but Nascents self heal in dungeons is already ridiculous, if we are all honest.

But also - we are not game designers. it is not our job to find a solution that works, that is what we pay Square Enix for. I'm sure a skilled game designer would have a few tools at hand to resolve the issue in a more satisfying way than what we have now.

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Originally Posted by Shougun

My immediate if was hired to be lazy is look at what id expected and then set a formula for floors and ceilings and curved in between. For example on burst, your issue is less if we are placing a ceiling. Level 30 has a burst of 500, level 90 has a burst of 900, ceiling the 900 and start to curve the rest of the job within the two bounds so we reach the approximate goal of potency per action / dps. If being lazy this would all be automatic too lol "why is my AOE 106 potency?" "Excel dictated it. :3"

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But it is still a burst you don't have at lower levels. this is more impactful in dungeons when you have downtime between pulls, so you have more uptime in your burst. I think we have fundamentally different views on how the low level should be handled, which is fine and it might be a case of agree to disagree on this topic.

On an (almost) unrelated topic, do people like having their burst cut off when things die? Do a trash pull, pop everything, 4 GCDs later, everything is dead. For me, that is wholly unsatisfying. Bosses? die after the 20 seconds burst phase, I mean, you got the burst in, but not a lot else. Great way to practice a rotation isn't it. /s

As for the people who keep saying 'I'm not a dev, that is for the devs to sort out', I just want to say, why not put a bit of thought into suggestions? By thinking about the pros and cons, or thinking about how things might be affected, you might be able to fine tune a suggestion to make it easier/more realistic to achieve. If I asked for the game to be made into an FPS, someone else responded, not possible/realistic for a multitude of reasons, but I came back with, that's for the devs to figure out, it doesn't make the initial claim less silly. This should apply to all aspects of the game.

Now, the above is an extreme example to highlight a point. If we were to bring it down to this topic itself, then yes, I think most would agree that low level is boring and needs improving. However if some of us are coming back with concerns or reasons why we don't think it is realistic, then they need to be addressed and not just dismissed outright. A few of us have even tried to make more realistic suggestions that both improve the low level experience and makes it less jarring for higher level players to get synced down to. this system, once made, then not needing to be touched again, unless something changes fundamentally with the job itself. As opposed to a system that needs to be adjusted every expansion due to new tools and maybe even if potencies change.

Well I'm a dev, personally it doesn't seem worth the hassle to implement a whole new database of downgraded skill potencies, nevermind all the QA that would have to be done to see what outdated or even sync'd content like criterion or ultimate ends up breaking as a result. Players would rather battle team spend their time doing job rehaul in 8.0 rather than this play-it-safe meta we got in 7.0

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

As for the people who keep saying 'I'm not a dev, that is for the devs to sort out', I just want to say, why not put a bit of thought into suggestions? By thinking about the pros and cons, or thinking about how things might be affected, you might be able to fine tune a suggestion to make it easier/more realistic to achieve. If I asked for the game to be made into an FPS, someone else responded, not possible/realistic for a multitude of reasons, but I came back with, that's for the devs to figure out, it doesn't make the initial claim less silly. This should apply to all aspects of the game.

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We do not know their backend and development pipeline well enough to know what is and isn't feasible or possible, and we don't know what the future plans for job design are or how set in stone they are. Making very in-depth, specific suggestions is completely pointless even if they were being conveyed to developers, and it's easy to tell from all the extremely detailed character update feedback that's been completely ignored that they aren't.

It would be a huge time investment but I think when leveling up jobs by doing old content is such a large portion of the game, the devs should consider that maybe this huge investment is worth it. It feels worse every expansion to do old content cause of the gimped rotations.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

We do not know their backend and development pipeline well enough to know what is and isn't feasible or possible, and we don't know what the future plans for job design are or how set in stone they are. Making very in-depth, specific suggestions is completely pointless even if they were being conveyed to developers, and it's easy to tell from all the extremely detailed character update feedback that's been completely ignored that they aren't.

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That's a big one, they are likely in the design phase of what 8.0 job skills will look like. So now if you added a project for downgrades, we have to update every skill almost every two years, or anytime we overhaul a job at every level tier in the database 50/60/70/etc, that's a heck lot of work. Adding permanent steps that don't generate a lot of value in an MMO game where most old content is just on a shelf life timer, is probably not going to be considered.

How does one scale down the power creep in support abilities? The incidental self-heals that tanks picked up in Endwalker? The sheer glut of heals the healers have by Lv.100? Etc. Etc.

If you just take that all as-is into lower-level content, spicy pulls won't be as spicy any more, for example, which strikes me as a step in the wrong direction.

But really, this talk of scaling potencies and whatnot misses something: If it feels bad to have a "gimped" rotation when synced down, surely it also feels bad if you're actually in the middle of leveling? I'd rather see effort put into designing jobs so that the distribution of abilities and traits across the level range actually has some logic to it. At each of the major breakpoints (Lv.30, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100), it should be clear what new "feature" gets added to the job. PCT gets this right, for example.

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Originally Posted by Daralii

We do not know their backend and development pipeline well enough to know what is and isn't feasible or possible, and we don't know what the future plans for job design are or how set in stone they are. Making very in-depth, specific suggestions is completely pointless even if they were being conveyed to developers, and it's easy to tell from all the extremely detailed character update feedback that's been completely ignored that they aren't.

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No, we don't, that is why we make realistic suggestions based on what we know is possible, or what we think is easy to implement. We know they can adjust potencies on skills based on their base action and traits, which givers you more control over potencies in certain level ranges. I guarantee that encounters in EW and DT will still feel the same as they do now as they have those traits in place, as opposed to ARR, where lower level duties are a joke compared to what they used to be.

We also know they are fully capable of adding new actions and traits wherever they want. There is no reason you couldn't enhance lower level gameplay by adding in old and unused actions and making them a weaker version of what we already have, like Steel Peak now being the Chakra Spender, or Wide Volley turning into Shadowbite.

What we do not know is whether a system can be put into place that can dynamically change potencies based on your current level and the level you are synced to. Or even if you don't want to mess with potencies and ruin balance even more, you don't even know if it is possible to easily change the code to allow you to use higher level actions at a lower level. Not to mention all the other problems that might arise with the system.

Reworking and rebalancing the low levels is a much more realistic goal based on what we know and as I said, this would be something they would have to do once and leave alone, barring any major job reworks like Summoner, as opposed to dynamically changing potencies that will likely need to be looked at every expansion.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

How does one scale down the power creep in support abilities? The incidental self-heals that tanks picked up in Endwalker? The sheer glut of heals the healers have by Lv.100? Etc. Etc.

If you just take that all as-is into lower-level content, spicy pulls won't be as spicy any more, for example, which strikes me as a step in the wrong direction.

But really, this talk of scaling potencies and whatnot misses something: If it feels bad to have a "gimped" rotation when synced down, surely it also feels bad if you're actually in the middle of leveling? I'd rather see effort put into designing jobs so that the distribution of abilities and traits across the level range actually has some logic to it. At each of the major breakpoints (Lv.30, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100), it should be clear what new "feature" gets added to the job. PCT gets this right, for example.

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There is not one spicy pull anymore when the tank knows what he does, you can even currently to save time pull the monster in the bossroom without issues, not one dungeons besides the 50 hard dungeons (and not all only 1-2 and that only because of the boss mechanics not because of the pulls) is challenging or has some spicy pulls to it.