PLD slight "rework" (yet another)

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Originally Posted by Carighan

That's kinda my point with many of these ideas. They don't change the actual problem, they just paint a new color over the symptoms. If you want to fix this, you need to introduce procs and randomization, at least given the current framework. In theory there are alternatives, but that'd require extremely extensive reworks.

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Static rotations are ultimately a consequence of static encounter timelines. Adding procs and randomness to a job/class merely papers over that fact, and it wouldn't make any sort of aesthetic or thematic sense in many cases.

I'd rather encounters be more random and dynamic.

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Originally Posted by AmiableApkallu

I'd rather encounters be more random and dynamic.

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This does not provide that fix, and we can look at other MMOs to draw this conclusion, plenty of which have plenty encounters that do not have fixed timelines. Players would still fall into statically aligned buff-alignment windows for burst phases whenever possible.

You can overdo it, and make fights so random that you cannot possibly use even the most static character design kit in a static manner. But in FFXIV, not even that would work. For one, our player kits have no options for this. Everything is on (comparatively) lengthy CDs. We have but one way of playing, basically. And second, to do this stuff would need to be so random, there is no reliable difficulty any more. You could just pull a few times on a savage boss until you get an easy run where they never use ability XYZ at all, bam, easy peasy clear.

And again, other MMOs did stuff like this already. GW2 in particular has highly randomized encounters in its early world bosses, and see how well that went down with players...
WoW also had bosses without fixed timelines that'd just ... "do stuff" between a few hard-coded moments. And it went away from that design, and for good reason, it was too restrictive for character design in fact.