because if you didn't you wouldn't have disregarded me bringing up a literal example of how to make fights where every job can approach the fight differently. it's not that hard, the only reason you'd assume it is. is because it's DPS or nothing which isn't the case. also you quite literally said it's the jobs fault if they're made more unique and a bad RDM dealt less damage than a good RDM or was able to use their kit more effectively than a bad RDM. which why is that the case then? should the good player not be doing better than a bad player? a job being unique has little to no change on balancing. once again why do you think i bring up RDM it has a 1k DPS difference and lower rDPS literally the thing thats calculated based on the amount of the damage you dealt and the damage buffs you applied added to it. but it's still brought into fights cause all the casters are *gasp* balanced. and each are still unique to one another. you can't sit and here and go i don't care about DPS then immediately ignore the fact the few unique jobs we do have are actually balanced even with lower DPSQuote:
Originally Posted by Saraide
and you know exactly where i'm pulling my stats from. hell even just looking at the medians you notice a significant difference even SMN is doing better than RDM and SMN is arguably easier than RDM
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06-07-2022, 02:20 AMpikalovr
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06-07-2022, 02:42 AMpikalovr
now if you said making fights would be more difficult you would be right. since they actually have to think about each job now instead of ok lets just make ti so the lowest DPs comp in base ilvl gear can clear it. but as you also said IT'S A MULTIMILLION DOLLAR COMPANY. if yoshi-p is not pushing for more funding for XIV then thats on him and SE being absolutely stupid for not investing in their literal biggest cash cow. there's no reason we should have to use fights being harder to make as anexcuse to not have unique jobs. we as the consumer should be pushing for more uniqueness more ways to play the game. we're paying 15$ a month for this (yes ik with inflation it'd be higher, but it's not companies being generous. it's that they never raised it cause who would pay for example 30$ a month to play a game for one month for MSQ then leave it). stop treating companies like saviors when it's literal basic economics/business tactics
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06-07-2022, 07:09 AMSaraideThe thing is, I dont. Because when i look at the rdps rankings on fflogs for asphodelos the differences are at most half of what you said, often even less.Quote:
Originally Posted by pikalovr
Remember when I said:
You are skipping the "ill suited" part and just argue about current and made up examples where casters are both unique and well suited for fights (be it for just damage or for progging). In your examples you havent given up balance. So thanks for agreeing with me I guess.Quote:
I dont want to feel like I'm holding back my group just because the job I like is very ill suited for a specific fight.
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06-07-2022, 07:15 AMicemageBecause you're exaggerating. The jobs are all different to me so it's your own opinion that they are "the same thing". Tell me how a dancer plays remotely the same as a bard other than the role actions.Quote:
Originally Posted by EnigmaticDodo
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06-07-2022, 07:51 AMPharisHanasakiWhile there are still differences, the jobs have been homigenized quite a lot throughout the years.Quote:
Originally Posted by icemage
For example, you know that when you switch from say WAR to GNB, you gotta look for that tank stance, 1,2,3 combo, aoe combo, dmg buff, and invul. The rest of the spells are the slight differences that make them somewhat unique.
They were more diverse before the StB dumb down. My main was AST and it got destroyed because the loggers wouldn't take any other buff but the dmg increase one, and the casuals and other non healer mains wanted to "main everything" and AST was to hard. I mean you had 3 buffs that you could extend to other members or enhance for a single target. It's really not hard at all.
Instead of trying to build on top of those differences, they decided to strip them all together for "balance". -
06-07-2022, 08:37 AMFoxyArekuI'm sorry but this made me spit my water nearly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kolsykol
The only way I could see someone think this is if this is the only MMO they've ever played. Jobs of the same role in this game are 100% interchangeable with incredibly minor mechanic differences with the exception of like, Ninja, and even then the damage combos are the same. -
06-07-2022, 08:47 AMpikalovrit's almost as if there's a reason why i split DPS and rDPS if you actually look at nDPS the jobs personal DPS or even the aDPS which gets rid of single target padding and not raid DPS you'll notice around a 900-1k DPS difference at absolute top end and around 800 DPS at the median for the tier. the fact once again the BLM is flat out dealing enough damage by himself to have higher rDPS than the two other jobs with a BUFF for the party is the issue (even in fights where they're closer). it doesn't matter that it's a slight increase. it's a matter that raid DPS is calculated by taking the jobs DPS minus others buffs like TA or brotherhood then adding the DPS gained from their buffs going to other people. meaning BLM is doing enough damage to literally invalidate a RDM or SMN being included in the comp at equal skill levels.Quote:
Originally Posted by Saraide
and i didn't skip the ill suited part. it's literally why i made the whole example for how a P1s mechanic could be done to make each caster be useful. the only thing that makes a job ill suited is the fight itself. not the job which is what i was trying to get through to you. just like the whole blunt/slashing/piercing damage if the fight heavily favored one type of damage without giving other damage types a chance to do something, thats not on the system of slashing/piercing/blunt. thats on the fight for not taking into account the system if they want every job to be viable. take for example A4s each leg could've been resistant to each type of damage magic/piercing/slahing/blunt and so each damage type would be necessary and useful. or hell even leviathan still has immunities on the head and tail for magic/phys ranged
balancing jobs to be unique isn't hard. and no you don't have to throw out one for the other. literally almost no other RPG does that cause it's not needed. even in co-op RPGs with multiple classes. what is hard to balance is fights to where one job doesn't feel like it's a need to pick or massively outshadow the others. which can be circumvented using examples i've used before. bring back unique debuffs (both on us and being able to put on the enemy), make mechanics be skippable/stoppable by unique means (DPSing the chains on warden, if you overshield the follow AOEs in P2s you don't have to worry about moving, etc...), give us different burst windows (similar to what kinda happens on P3s where you have different windows to burst thanks to AD variance and whether or not you kill them fast enough), etc.. -
06-07-2022, 09:08 AMDeverynI spit my water on you. :rolleyes:Quote:
Originally Posted by FoxyAreku
We're not all the same. One size does not fit all.
There's enough difference that you'll have people favor one over the other, like sage vs. scholar or any other healer. Some jobs are a little busier than others. -
06-07-2022, 10:05 AMStriker44I've played several MMO's. WoW, GW, GW2, SWTOR, and FFXIV (possibly others, not sure). And I find the jobs quite different. If there were only "incredibly minor" differences, I wouldn't find I enjoy certain ones much more than others precisely *because* of the differences between them. RDM plays very different than Bard, which plays very different than Dragoon from my experience. SCH plays distinctly from WHM, with a focus on shields and AoE healing vs. single-target power heals. Perhaps it's time to step back and actually listen to your fellow players...Quote:
Originally Posted by FoxyAreku
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06-07-2022, 10:22 AMpikalovrreally out here comparing completely different roles to eachother and says they feel different like ??? if they didn't we wouldn't even have seperate roles my guy. why on gods green earth would you compare a melee DPS to a caster? and not you know other melees? and even RDM is a hybrid so it's still not a good comparison. also WHM and SCH used to be the only healers in game so they become the regen and shield healers then came AST that could switch stances between regen and shield healing but since SGE was coming out AST became a pure healer and SGE was the other shield healer now once again if you were to compare AST to WHM sure cards/seals vs. lillies and benediction versus group buff but thats about it tbh. SCH has the fairy (a given as i've said before cause without the fairy it literally would not be a SCH), expedience, aetherflow stacks, and emergency tactics/deployment tactics over SGE in terms of uniqueness. SGE has eukrasia (which is used to change your single target to a DOT and your heals to shields), toxicon/addersgall stacks which is essentially harder to get aetherflow stacks and acually split up (addersgall support/toxicon ONE damage ability emphasis on ONE). now in terms of DPSing options? 1 single target 1 AOE 1 DoT and a couple of oGCD options is basically what you getQuote:
Originally Posted by Striker44
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06-07-2022, 10:44 AMAllegor
I could write a whole essay about it but I know it's like talking to a wall. All I'll say is if you can place over 80% of a job's entire kit in the same hotkeys/keybinds as another job *cough cough* healers *cough* then they're functionally the same, and aesthetics being practically the only thing keeping them separate.
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06-07-2022, 01:17 PMDeverynNope. This is talking to a wall right here. You have to have the last word to boot.Quote:
Originally Posted by Allegor
You could write an essay and you'd probably sound more foolish for spending all that time and wasting ours.
Frankly, there's nothing wrong with being able to change from one to another and have things in more or less the same spot. That doesn't make everything the same. It's just consistent. That makes life easier when you go to PF something and someone filled your preferred job. The whole point of the job system is flexibility and if the difference is too drastic from one to the next, that complicates things a little too much and that flexibility is lost. -
06-07-2022, 01:24 PManhaato"Wah wah wah I don't wanna think wah wah wah" that's what I'm hearing.Quote:
Originally Posted by Deveryn
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06-07-2022, 01:42 PMNizzi
I guess it was wrong for me to expect Square Enix to actually apply themselves and make something that offers a unique and functionally different gameplay style that people were not getting before on a role that hadn't received a new job in it since 2015 with Heavensward.
I for one get excited when new job come out and it's the same as old job except with flashy lights and new animations! ME clap hands real hard and drool out my mouth excited for more!!! What will they copy next? I'm excited to see what job they copy and paste in 7.0. $40 + $15 a month subscription WELL SPENT! -
06-07-2022, 02:22 PMKaliesto
They could try to make a new Role that isn't DPS, Tank or a healer.
Something completely out of the norm.
(not sure what that would look like though).
Maybe Support Role and acts as the 9th member of a party going beyond the traditional 8? Basically it never attacks, and throws support and debuff spells as the trade off with no attack spells. -
06-07-2022, 02:56 PMpikalovri mean theoretically BLU mage is what you'd be looking (it can be anything it wants tbh which technically makes it more than a DPS healer or tank) at but it'll never go standard. and i would much rather healers get turned into supports than an entire support role if anything.Quote:
Originally Posted by Kaliesto
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06-08-2022, 02:27 AMpikalovr
i got to thinking bout it, and it would be extremely cool if we got advanced versions of each job. so people could actually see what a "harder" more complex unique job system would look like. make them levels 1-50 and let people do level 1-50 content with them and group up with other advanced job users. if you look on the thread about job inspirations, you'll see where i basically talk about learning advanced versions of jobs and some newer more complex jobs from each city state leader
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...ation.../page2 -
06-08-2022, 01:40 PMReylahLet me write that essay for you so some people can get a better picture.Quote:
Originally Posted by Allegor
Lets look at my hotbars for my healers WHM, AST and SGE (I haven't touched scholar):
1) cure/benefic/Dosis (all small heals and dosis because its sages small heal)
2) cure 2/benefic 2/diagnosis (all medium heals)
3) regen/aspected benefic/Eurasia (regen/setup for shield button)
4) benediction/essential dignity/tetragrammaton (all single target emergency heal)
5) medica/helios/prognosis (basic AoE heal)
6)esuna (not like its used much but this is where I have dispels on my bars in other games)
7)medica 2/aspected helios/- (AoE regen and some days I'm tempted to put a second prognosis here for eukrasian prognosis after hitting eukrasia just for habit's sake of "stronger AoE" on 7)
8)cure 3 (unique to white mage as a larger cast AoE heal but rarely used because the fights are designed so that the jobs without it can get by just fine)
shift-1)stone/maleific/dosis (single target damage)
shift-2)aero/combust/toxicon (Damage over time and toxikon because why not, though again I might just have a second dosis here for a smoother transition with eukrasia and eukrasian dosis)
shift-3)holy/gravity/Dyskrasia (AoE)
The other buttons are scattered wherever mostly because the packet of astrologian card buttons takes up most of my mouse buttons (M3-M5 + shift Ms) causing AST to unalign(ironically) from the other jobs.
What can we get from this? Well the vast majority of healer kits are the same with minor differences for flavor at best. Sage has the most differences in but those are all because Eukrasia just consolidates some of the buttons with no real change in functionality. This can be expanded to cover the major cooldowns/ogcds as well.
comparable major cooldowns:
aqua veil/exaltation/ tauochole (single target damage reduction)
asylum/collective unconscious/Physis 2 and kerachole(Instant AoE regen)
divine benison/celestial intersection/haima (single target shield, presumably for a tank buster)
planetary indulgence/ horoscope/pepis (group heal requiring setup)
liturgy of the Bell/earthly star/ phanhaima (massive group heal/shield)
temperance/-/krasis (healing buff)
Assize/celestial opposition/holos and ixochole (instant AoE heal)
Though there are a few more unique abilities and more instances of extra effects like mana, damage, or damage reduction for flavor here, there is still a ton of overlap in what is mechanically done by each healer. Obviously there are some unique job abilities like benediction, divination, toxikon, etc…
Lilies, cards, and addergall/sting are all job gauge things and so yeah they should be unique and job defining. That said they are also peripheral to playing the role. Sure it's not optimal to ignore them but with cards no longer tied to divination for AST ignoring them is a negligible dps loss in most content. 3-5% on 1/4, 1/8, or 1/24 people, depending on what content you are running, with 66% uptime is barely worth calling relevant even in prog. Clearly a simplification, but the point is they are just there for seals (also barely relevant) and the illusion of doing something. It's just more fun to use them than not. Lilities give you the equivalent of 3 more glares a minute to make up for the 3 glares you didn’t cast and addersgall is a shared charge system for some of your abilities while adderssting just lets you cast dosis equivalents while moving.
None of those affect how you fill the healing role in the party. No, that's not a call for “healers should only heal”, I just mean that when the game gives you a problem for healers to solve, your job gauge is rarely, if ever, a factor in how you solve it.
In fact your job is barely a factor in how you solve it. The difference between “shield healing” and “pure healing” is whether you want to finish your cast before the damage goes out or after. That's about the only difference I can see. For every shield that lets you cast and stop the damage there is a regen that lets you cast and go back to what you were doing while it fixes the damage.
The more I look at the overlaps between 3 of the 4 healers the more I become concerned that the devs are becoming… I hate using this word, especially for devs… lazy. Because you can look at these abilities and look at the fights and say “ok so this is where they want me to use X ability and this is where I should use Y” and it becomes excruciatingly clear that the fights are made so that you can clear them only using the core tools. When testing a fight it's no longer “can all healers clear this fight?” but instead “if one healer can clear this fight, the rest can.” They don’t have to ask themselves “Can this healer solve this problem?” just “Do all healers have a button for this? Then we can add this mechanic”. -
06-08-2022, 01:59 PMReylah
You can see a lack of attention to individual healer’s abilities with Macrocosm making a whole mechanic irrelevant in p3s because they just didn’t consider what each job could do to solve that mechanic. This would be less atrocious if there were other sorts of mechanics that other healers could “cheese”, but in a world where all the healers have been forced to have the same core abilities the idea that the one new mechanic amongst the healer lvl90 abilities wasn’t tested in a raid in same expansion the ability is available (like this isn’t even an old ability they forgot about coming back and biting them in the rump) is… I’ll say “bizarre”, to avoid using stronger words.
I say it wasn’t tested because everything the devs have said about balance and given as an excuse for homogenization leads me to believe they wouldn’t want 1 job to stand so far ahead of all the others when solving any given problem. If the other healers each had a different way of addressing problems and AST’s just had the best solution for this situation that would be fine along as the other healers had other places to shine. But they don’t because everyone else has the same kit as before and AST got the only new toy, healing that scales from damage taken.
Also if you just read macrocosm’s tooltip, It's basically a 50% damage reduction on anything that doesn’t kill you. In a game that relies on large bursts of damage to jump scare healers, how was the ability to cut any damage spike in half not considered when designing a fight? My money is on that getting capped in the upcoming AST changes just because it sticks out like a sore thumb in healer power.
I know that sounds like “the outlier is bad, don’t let one class have something unique” but that's not what I’m getting at.
If everything's the same then any one outlier is likely to upset the scales.
Since all dps burst are aligning to 2min burst cooldowns they can’t introduce a dps with a burst cycle that lines up at 1.5mins because it will either have to hold its burst, have high enough burst that it doesn’t need to line up with 2min cooldowns and thus be insane, or just feel bad because they don’t get to be apart of the burst window. It also doesn’t help that the fights are choreographed around every job behaving the same way. The big moments are designed to line up with 2min cooldowns. It's why the music works so damn well but it's also the reason we can’t have anything different.
The devs saying they can’t think of anything new and unique is disappointing because they wrote themselves into a corner where nothing can be different without seeming wrong. We can’t have new things because everything else is the same either on the micro level of healer and tank skills or the macro level of 2 min burst rotations. -
06-08-2022, 05:25 PMMikey_R1) Diagnosis IS Sage's small heal, Dosis is not. As you are aware, Dosis is Sage's single target attack. The extra healing from Kardia is Sage's equivalent to the Scholar's Fairy. PLUS, Diagnosis is weaker by 50 potency than Cure and Benefic (450/500)Quote:
Originally Posted by Reylah
2) Going by the above, Sage has no equivalent for a GCD big heal, nor does Scholar.
3) We are now onto the regens/shield. Obviously, WHM and AST have a regen, though AST trades 3 seconds (1 tick) of regen time for an initial heal. Sage's Eukrasian Diagnosis and Adloquium are the same, except for MP cost.
4) Shield healers have no way to restore a large amount of HP with 1 button. You also listed 2 WHM actions and 1 AST. The closest you get will be Lustrate/Druochole, both can be spammed, as long as you have the stacks for it, but that is obviously using resources that could go somewhere else. This means it is more beneficial for shield healers to keep people healthy and not let them drop low.
5) Did you expect a healer wouldn't get one? Though Sage's is weaker and the best Scholar can do (on the GCD) is Succor, unless you want to use up Emergency Tactics (15 second cooldown)
6) I mean, of course, you can dress it up however you want, but it will perform the same thing, just like all revives. Would it be nice to have something job specific? sure, but even then I wouldn't expect it to do anything extra.
7) Sure, but Scholar has no equivalent, unless you want to put Succor here, but then it has no basic GCD heal equivalent.
8) It is worth noting that the AoE for Cure 3 is smaller than Medica/Medica 2, it has the benefit of being a targeted AoE and it is also incredibly powerful for an AoE.
I added the numbers for ease of comparison.Quote:
Originally Posted by Reylah
1) Aquaveil is just damage reduction, Exaltation is a damage reduction with a heal at the end, Taurochole is a damage reduction with a heal at the start and it lasts longer, Scholar has no equivalent.
2) Asylum is a placable ground target with a heal increase, Collective is around the user, Physis 2 grants a heal increase and Kerachole has a damage reduction. Scholar has Whispering Dawn and Sacred Soil which has a damage reduction. The fun thing here is that Physis 2 has the strongest regen ticks.
3) Divine benison is just a shield, Celestial intersection has an initial heal (and the shield is weaker), Haima is unique in how it works and it has a heal based on how many shield stacks are left.
4) Add Emergency Tactics/Succor to the list. Sage here is different has you have to have the shield survive to make use of it, you wouldn't Eukrasian Prognosis just for this.
5) Scholar has no equivalent, unless you want to put Sacred Soil here.
6) Temperance is also a Damage reduction, AST has Neutral Sect, which also adds a shield to Aspected Benefic/Helios, Sage has the shortest lasting one which also has nothing extra and SCH (Dissipation) has the longest lasting one that comes with no fairy but a refill of Aetherflow.
7) Indomitability for Scholar. Also, again, all behave differently.
But aren't these differences what people want? These are the job flavours after all. This is why I keep saying, you have to look past the oversimplification and see that there is more there. You also make mention that, once you solve a fight with one healer, you have solved it for all. I would say that is an oversimplification, however, humour me with this simple scenario. A new healer doesn't have an AoE heal, the boss does AoE damage, this new healer has no effective way to deal with it, so you wouldn't bring it. This is why I say every healer and tank need to have some sort of basic toolkit. There are going to be overlaps, that is inevitable.Quote:
Originally Posted by Reylah
If they were vastly different, and there was a mechanic a healer couldn't do, would you rather they changed the job to be able to handle it, or have to restrict the boss design in order to accommodate?Quote:
Originally Posted by Reylah
I'm just going to add Macrocosmos here. You have a healer that can cheese a mechanic, this is something unique to 1 healer. You then complain that the Devs have missed this obvious loophole and they obviously haven't tested this. But this is what you wanted. You wanted the healers to be unique and if it means a healer can cheese a mechanic, that is what will happen. Also, it was NEVER the devs that said anything about homogenisation, that has always been the playerbase complaining about it and that was because people didn't like it when one job had an obvious advantage which meant not taking other jobs. Jobs have been made 1/2 minute because people used to complain that, say, Monk's buffs didn't line up (they were 90 seconds), the blunt/slashing etc. debuffs went as it just caused the piercing META which caused people to forgo casters and the list goes on. -
06-08-2022, 06:44 PMSaraideMacrocosmos isnt the only example for this either. Ninja having so many dashes connected to important attacks made it very awkward in zodiark ex for no good reason. They very quickly changed that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Reylah
I dont think I am going out on a limb here when I say people arguing for more job uniqueness would rather have it be intentional and designed instead of being on accident.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mikey_R
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06-08-2022, 09:31 PMMikey_RThe question then becomes, what would someone prefer? Knowing that they design fights with specific jobs in mind that they might cheese certain mechanics, or have the fights be designed independent of jobs and have these cheese mechanics be a happy accident?Quote:
Originally Posted by Saraide
At this point though, the point has moved away from jobs uniqueness to encounter design, which is something I do think needs to be looked at. Why give all tanks access to a stun/interrupt and not have them be used, as an example (I think there is only 1 fight in all of EW that has an interrupt, that being the last boss in Ktisis, there might be one in Savage, but I do not know those fights). -
06-08-2022, 09:36 PMSaraideI dont think you can seperate the two. The results of job design and combat design are always tied to each other.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mikey_R
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06-09-2022, 02:12 AMSemirhage
I'm all for job uniqueness. FFXIV would benefit from hiring a MUCH larger job design team and giving personal attention to each job.
Having played WHM for years, I've only ever had one major caution when it comes to job uniqueness, and no it's not "boo hoo it creates a meta". It's when said "uniqueness" leads to a stagnant, permanent meta. It's when "uniqueness" just means "hmmm, how can we be distinct from each other. I know! I'll be superior at everything the combat system asks a class to do and every single piece of remotely difficult content absurdly caters to my strengths. You be good at superfluous things that don't actually afford you advantages, and worst-in-role for everything the combat system cares about. See! We're unique now! I'm good at everything and you suck. Also don't you dare ask to be good at anything important, that would be ~homogenization~".
That's the trap named Late Heavensward-Stormblood that I want to avoid. -
06-09-2022, 02:58 AMpikalovrthe actual trap at least to me was the damage system and how certain damage types felt like they were never taken into account and fights themselves dealing certain damage types to make certain tanks far superior to others. you can have jobs tackle fights different ways. but when you blatantly ignore those jobs or the system that is forcing seperation even in their own roles for fights. it's really easy to look at the jobs themselves and go you're the problem. and not other systems or issues. which is why every job basically do the same things now. and we have such a stale combat system hell we only really have 2 buffs and 2 debuffs for bosses damage up/defense up for us and damage down/defense down for bosses. at least with jobs like RPR we're starting to see a pull towards more unique mechanics like arcane circle. that requires the entire party to cooperate and hit a basic GCD to give the RPR a free shroud off plentiful harvest. i mean sure it isn't hard or anything but when something as simple as arcane circle feels fresh somethings wrong imo.Quote:
Originally Posted by Semirhage
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06-10-2022, 10:50 AMReylahQuote:
Originally Posted by Mikey_R
That was literally just a map of where I have all the abilities on my keyboard with “()” for why I put it there and I said I didn’t play Scholar (like never played Scholar. I only have arcanist at 15 because it was needed to unlock WHM and BLM when I started playing) so I’m not going to comment on it. If it's different, that's great, but the three remaining healers very clearly have a huge amount of overlap.
1) The low damage on tanks (note that for later) means I find that the kardia healing replaces when I would cast a small heal. Sure it’s not as much potency but if I’m casting dosis as part of downtime dps it keeps the tank up just fine.
2) Yeah if you are looking at potency sure it's closer to cure/benefic but functionally I find that I’m hitting it in response to the same amount of damage as I would for the medium heals. This is mostly because I'm tapping eukrasia then hitting diagnosis for the shield. Again kardia healing from dosis covers most of the damage on tanks during boss fights and if the dps know what's up they can avoid 90% of the damage that would need a med heal. If they don’t they yeah I’ll just cast diagnosis. Also maybe its just me but I find that small heals are usually 10-25% of a tank health bar but like almost 50% of a dps rendering the medium heals excessive for them in most cases anyways.
3) Yep thats exactly what’s happening on that button. There are 2 core buttons that are defined by whether you are a pure or shield healer. This button and the “stronger AoE” are flavored by that divide. Lets not kid ourselves though, 1 extra tick vs an initial heal is not a functional difference. If that initial heal saves someone you should have been casting something stronger. Compared to the core functionality, much of the additional effects are akin to flavor text on an item in affecting how you use the ability.
4) Got me. I lost track of where I was when looking up how to spell tetragrammaton and wrote it over druochole instead of benediction. I had reconsidered benediction to be unique because it is just no questions asked 100% health bar which fall in line with the “white mage is the chonky healer” flavor (Same as cure 3 really, but more on that latter) and you can see that when I list it with the uniques latter on. Looking back I should probably just move tauochole here for sage because looking at the cooldown, potency, and damage reduction it's just a superior tetragrammaton for 1 addersgall.
5) Again this is just where these buttons are actually on my hot bar. I login que as healer, hit 5 to deal with any moderate AoE damage if I don’t feel like finding where I put the instant AoE cooldown on my bars for whatever job i’m on because that will often be off cooldown in time for the next AoE anyway.
6) Again, just where it is. It would be weird if I skipped straight from the 5 button to the 7 button in this list.
7) Scholar is not something I know. That's why I only listed WHM,AST, and SGE stuff and can point out how blatantly similar they are.
8) It's the only spell across all 3 jobs I have on my 8 button so by all rights it probably should be considered unique but it solves no problem that can’t be solved by 2 basic AoE heals other than 1 less cast. Great for optimization on prog or speedkills maybe but hardly a relevant difference to any other content because the fights are designed to give you the space to cast the 2 basic AoEs or a Stronger AoE (time for the shield ones is typically given during a cast beforehand) if you’re feeling spicy.
It's the same with benediction. It fits the supposed difference between WHM and AST as pure healers with WHM having beefier heals and AST requiring more setup time, but everything 700+ potency is pretty dang close to a full heal compared to non-tank health bars anyways. -
06-10-2022, 10:55 AMReylahDisregarding scholars again because I set a clear list of which healers I was talking about being explicitly limited to the healers I actually played and saw a large quantity of overlap between. Great for Scholar if it’s different but that doesn’t change the status of the other 3.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mikey_R
You’ve written up a nice list of what all these abilities do and the minor differences between them, but those differences don’t actually change their functionality.
When I need a shield for a tank buster I hit divine benison/celestial intersection/haima. It doesn’t matter if Ast shield is weaker than WHM by ~100 potency but has 100 more total with the heal. The heal only matters if the target already has damage but I am casting the shield because of incoming damage not damage already taken. If the target already has damage it's better but the shield is the biggest factor in why I'm using it.
In the case of 4) I do think it's weird that sage even has this ability considering the whole point of a shield is to eat the damage before it happens. I use this button when I accidentally cast EP late and need to turn it into a heal instead. Same for the single target shield. If I actually needed the heal itself I would cast the basic AoE instead.
So first off we’re both going out on a limb by assuming what people want so I want to make it very clear that from here on out this is just my opinion based on my own experiences and my interpretation of what I’ve read from others.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mikey_R
Yes, but that doesn’t mean they are enough. Also I’m not sure you can call the extra effects like 10% DR or a regen flavours of the jobs when there is so much cross pollination between the jobs. If it were a case were WHM as the basic healer had higher initial potency on its heal, Ast had lower initial heals but had regens to make up for it, and SGE with its idea of preempting damage had the damage reduction, then maybe the argument could be made but right now its more of a question of which buttons are those extra effects on for each job.
When people complain about the healers all being the same it indicates to me that, regardless of the differences that exist, the distinctions are insufficient. I expect the reason why people feel like healers play the same is because the amount of times they interact with the features that distinguish a job or make that job’s buttons unique is too low.
The example you give highlights the trap I feel the dev have fallen into: conflating the idea that a lacking a 1 button answer means lacking an answer at all. The new healer doesn’t have to have the same ~300 potency AoE heal every healer has. They just have to have a way of healing the group. What if instead of the same basic AoE that other healers have the new healer instead uses the setup and consume mechanic that planetary indulgence/horoscope/pepis currently have where they set up a buff on people through some other action and then consume it to heal the group? and that is their basic way of healing everyone instead of being an extra button in most other healer’s kits.
The question is “how does the healer able to heal a group of people?” The easiest answer has been to give a button that does that instead of thinking about the different ways of accomplishing that goal. Before people say “oh thats just another mechanic you’re sharing” This is just an example of another way of solving the AoE healing problem that the devs have already thought of but just gave to everyone instead of keeping as a unique mechanic to a job. It's part of why they can’t make things that feel unique, because they don’t let mechanics be unique.
This is another trap. Especially in the heavily scripted fights of FFXIV. Consider this:Quote:
Originally Posted by Mikey_R
A boss uses an ability that does AoE damage to the group that requires 900 healing to heal off. The next time the boss uses the AoE is in 15 secs. That means that all each healer has to accomplish is generate 900 healing in that 15 sec window to be equal with each other for that mechanic. This thought process can be applied to income damage/outgoing healing mechanics in a fight design outside of standing in death. % heal reductions are % increases in healing required (shield healers will have an easier time during this if shields aren’t reduced). Flat healing reduction (X amount of heals are blocked) is a flat increase in the hps required (with smaller base heals shield healers will have a harder time). All of this is if you want to stay health neutral. If you are one of the hardcore sadistic healers who says you >0 is all a healthbar needs to be then you have more wiggle room and if you’re a dev who wants to ramp up tension you can put the hps requirement just higher than the healers can manage and have healthbars slowly go down against crushing odds as the music ramps up.
Using the paradigms I mentioned above (WHM big basic heals, AST regen, SGE DR and shields, new consume healer ‘NH’ for short)
WHM cast 2 450 heal basic AoEs.
AST casts a 300 heal AoE with a 100 heal tick every 3 secs for 12 secs (700 per cast) and then another before the next burst. sure it's over healing but that will carry into the next burst or help with any other damage happening.
SGE pre-cast a 500 damage (higher potency than the WHM heal because you have to get the timing right or its not as effective) shield with 15% DR before the ability, reducing the damage to 715 and the shields eat all but 215 so they cast a 300 heal basic AoE heal.
NH sets up the buff precast like the SGE then consumes the buff for a 900 point heal. I realize this needs more depth to seem balanced. Let's say that the buff increases the next heal on the target by 300% so they’re base AoE is lower like 300. They’ve now healed the mechanic in 1 cast of the consume but they will need to spend more time setting up for the next burst. To offset the deceased downtime most of their dps comes from maintaining DoTs on the boss. Maybe there is an AoE way to spread the buff but it only increases the heals by 200% instead of 300%. Idk. Don’t get hung up too much on the numbers because those can and should be tweaked. I’m not going to try to design and balance a whole new job in a few days. The point is all of the healers can accomplish the same throughput of healing in time for the next boss mechanic. But they differed in the way they did it.
The only “restriction” on the boss is an upper limit to the Healing per second the boss requires (which already exists). There can be other non-AoE mechanics in those 15 secs that won’t add to the AoE heals per second requirement for that slice of the boss fight but the healers only have to spend 2 casts in 15 secs solving this mechanic and can spend the rest dealing with other things.
Want more pressure? Increase the damage or decrease the time until the next cast of it. The only time restriction is the lower limit of 3 cast (~7.5 secs) from the AST relying on the initial heal of their ability then they begin to be a tad weaker in the mechanic because they have to cast 3 things instead of 2. Then they may want to use a cooldown instead. Upper limit of damage is capped at either A) whatever straight up kills the party or B) ~1800-2100 damage in 15 secs required if we assume you’re ok with forcing the NH to spam their basic AoE for 15 secs straight and not have buffs up for the next burst. Also assuming the lack of any major cooldowns, party buffs or tank LB3s because at a certain point you just kinda hit that realm anyways. Want less pressure? Do the opposite. Devs have plenty of levers are their disposal to tweak fights. What if they pulse that damage over the 15 secs instead of a burst? Same hps requirement but the SGE shield will last longer and the WHM will have to space out their cast instead of casting back to back.
You might say “but the NH is still casting an AoE '' yeah, but it's not the main way they are solving the mechanic that comes from the buffs they consume. Same for SGE the bulk of the damage never hits a health bar because of DR and shields and they get to keep their eukrasia mechanic.
Not quite. What I wanted was for AST to not be the only healer who had the ability to “cheese” a mechanic through a unique skill but for others to also have abilities that let them excel at different mechanics. If we grind things down to spreadsheets again and if I stop and think about it, Macrocosmos isn’t actually a cheese it's just an insanely powerful tool given the right circumstances and no other healer had something comparable and I am miffed because I feel the devs missed this precisely because they have been paying so little attention to how healers actually interact with fights and mechanics due to homogenizing the rest of the healer kits and seeming to balance around that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mikey_R
The real problem is that Macrocosmos in its current design is essentially a 50% DR (that’s not far off a tank LB3) on anything that doesn’t kill you and just way too strong vs a big damage spike compared to anything other healers have its power level is close to a LB. I’m beginning to wonder how many potential abilities were cut or hamstrung from healers or other jobs for stepping too close to the LBs territory. Especially strong group defensives that didn’t slip through the cracks like Macrocosmos and were tossed because they might steal the glory from tank LB3s.
A better design might have been to have Macrocosmos stagger the damage so it stores 50% of the damage and then doles it out the stored damage over time reducing the need for immediate burst healing and instead allowing regens and longer duration DRs to get more value without making half of the mechanic’s damage obsolete. That also opens up room for WHM to have a flat huge group burst heal, and SGE the have a large group shield with 20-30% damage reduction both good against burst.
Um… SCH… a pulsing shield that also pulses a big heal from the big fancy fairy good for multihit/heavy damage overtime… uh see below for how far off my rocker I’m sliding.
I know I said I wouldn’t talk about Scholar because by my own admission I don’t know salt about Scholar… but if we run with the idea that the fairy provides passive healing and that they are a shield healer then if we give damage reduction extra text to SGE we can treat the fairy as an extra regen text making SCH a hybrid shield/small regen healer with better recovery than SGE through more healing with the fairy. It sounds like they have a fair amount of unique mechanics like deployment tactics for spreading their shields so maybe double down on that for spreading AoE shields by reducing/removing the cooldown and replacing succor. With more buff management shift dps into maintaining dots so you can bring back the dots I hear folks cry for. Gives them a reason to spend time making the fairy less jank? Idk man this time I am way out of my depth and you can just ignore this section if you see nothing good.
None of this addresses current incoming vs outgoing damage in fight designs that can cause a lot of healer downtime but I would hope that if the devs took a closer look at what breathing room healers have they might tweak some things.
This also barely touches on healer downtimes and what to do in them other than having some healers stay buisier managing buffs for healing and moving some of the remaining time that would be spent on single target spam into dot maintenance so it has to happen less.
And these advantages mean more when everything is almost cookie cutter and then you find the gingerbread man with the third arm(to better dunk his foes in milk). If everything's the same then even the small difference can become exaggerated, like a dip in an ice skating rink. But if everything is uneven but within an acceptable range people care less about the difference like grass in a park. DPS jobs do exactly this. With the exception of designated “selfish” jobs the DPS have wildly different mechanics(by healer standards) but theoretically stay in roughly the same contributed damage range. They also still have unique mechanics that interact with the basics of what they do like dualcast for RDM and standard step for DNR.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mikey_R
Going back to what I said earlier (oh gods sooo much earlier) the current difference between healers are extra text that you barely interact with when making decisions but the difference between BRD, DNR, and MCH are parts of the core to how you play that job (song,dances, um… packing the heat? Still low level on MCH by I know it plays differently from the others). Outside of the burst window problem there is still a difference between the flavor of the jobs.
Heck I’m even willing to not die on the burst window hill if the devs will wake up and realize just how much room they have to play with anywhere else. I wonder if internally they even just doubled RDM black and white mana generation for kicks and giggles, just to see what would happen. Oh gods I’m losing it. -
06-10-2022, 11:13 AMIlyrian
It's just pressing button in a game that has *don't stand in the fire* one-shot mechanics.
The whole engine can't provide anything more than that without removing the GCD. -
06-10-2022, 04:07 PMpikalovrAs i've stated before a few unique abilities make a unique kit it does not. and super minor changes don't automatically create a new ability. a single tick loss for a on apply heal is literally negligible since you're casting for the regen anyways. meaning the target most likely has taken damage anyways and you're using regen to keep them up or heal them for the next big mechanic while you spam your one DPS button. there's no more thought being put into it than the other regens. hell if fae gauge had more to do then the fairy link would have more to think about than that one minor change.Quote:
Originally Posted by Reylah
also SCH has excog which is their "panic" high heal ability, which is what abilities like benediction are for. but SCH will always be more unique than the other jobs regardless of how simple kits get. cause you need to have summons that do stuff or it's no longer SCH. unlike say AST SGE and WHM where you can have WHM copy the seal system just with elementals instead or SGE could copy it using different scientific stacks. think like addersgall and toxicon and a third one, after using them in a set combination you unlock a self buff due to mixing them all correctly.
cards were a great mechanic to base AST around. cause it's something that makes sense and alot harder to justify a WHM or SGE having access to something similar. which is why i wish they'd lean heavier into the few unique mechanics/resources we have left like aetherflow and the fae gauge, like lillies/elemental effects, like cards/seals, like addersgall/toxicon stacks. give them more reasons to why they couldn't just be x flavored mechanic like cards. and for the love of god give fae gauge something else to do i'll take another single target damage ability for it at this point.
eukrasia basically just being a hey we could've given you three more buttons but we decided to give you one button to access them instead, is a horrible way to try to create artificial uniqueness. especially when the other 3 jobs can access their DoTs easier and SCH doesn't need to wait an entire CD (yes ik it's short but you still technically need two GCDs to use your shield) to shield everyone. instead get rid of eukrasia and make it a passive ability similar to RDM dual cast. after casting an addersgall or toxicon ability your GCDs get augmented to their eukrasian counterparts. making a far more interactive way to reach them and incentivizes you to think about your resources more for DoT upkeep.
here's plenty of ways to make jobs lean into what makes them unique more. both in the damage, utility, and heal departments. but the issue is people can't understand basic fight creation and understand that you can make fights that allow jobs to handle it different ways. like i brought up with the casters in my P1s example.
they just assume we have to let jobs sit there and suffer or let every job basically do the same thing to appease how fights are made.
now this next part isn't aimed at you Reylah. but to a certain man who can't understand basic job balance and fight design.
YES FIGHT DESIGN AND JOB DESIGN GO HAND IN HAND. IT'S EXPECTED IF YOU MAKE 19 JOBS THAT YOU LOOK AT ALL 19 JOBS WHEN MAKING A FIGHT. TO MAKE SURE EACH JOB CAN EITHER BRING A UNIQUE WAY TO GET THE FIGHT DONE AT SIMILAR TIMES. OR WAYS TO HANDLE CERTAIN MECHANICS THAT OTHERS CAN'T. -
06-10-2022, 04:43 PMHazama999100% agree with you here. I'd be perfectly fine with having all jobs be able to clear content while at the same time having a fluctuating optimal level relative to the content. Ultimately, and this is just me talkin', I don't much mind X job being ever so slightly better than Y job... in a game in which you can just have both on the same character.Quote:
Originally Posted by anhaato
Somewhat tangential, but I wonder... what is the JP playerbase's stance on the current state of jobs? -
06-11-2022, 07:48 AMIkaraGreydancer
Wouldn't having less job balance just lean toward more metas and thus more class complaints?
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06-11-2022, 07:56 AMVirusOnline
personally job identity > balance
meta may come into play but that's where se should put their hard work instead of throwing 10% potency hotfix at everything -
06-11-2022, 07:57 AMIkaraGreydancerIdk. Guess I'm one of those weirdos that feel job currently do have their own identityQuote:
Originally Posted by VirusOnline
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06-11-2022, 08:05 AMVirusOnlinean identity in mmos usually mean that a job has something else that no other job can do, and that makes that job valuable in specific scenariosQuote:
Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer
the best example of identity being ruined is reaper. a reaper is just a watered down mnk/drg/insert melee here
delete reaper and nothing changes
thats how little identity it has
edit: now if reaper gave the ability to allow everyone in the party to use its teleport glob, that'd be a great start -
06-11-2022, 09:03 AMIkaraGreydancerEhh can't say you're wrong but Idk if I agree there. Having something completely different isn't the only indicator. It could be something similar but works differently or has different effect. Tank invuln for example, none of the 4 have the same effects as the other. It's smart for Paladin to pop theirs at anytime. Not so much for a Gunbreaker.Quote:
Originally Posted by VirusOnline
Different example being classes like Repear, Monk, Sam and Ninja having mitigation skills yet Reaper is the one that gets a party wide after effect to it. Monks comes with a personal True North (think that's what's its called). Sam USE to have extra healing part (wish that was buffed not removed). That to me still gives these classes an identity. I just don't think it's a stark as folks would like is all -
06-11-2022, 01:27 PMDeveryn
Reaper very much has its own identity being rather on the twitchy side for all the different skills you'll hit. It's a whirlwind of murder :p Chain this. chain that. Pop gauge. Chain more. Reapply DoT. Chain chain chain.
An FC mate described it as a job one doesn't really play if they're trying to wind down for sleep. :) -
06-11-2022, 08:09 PMVirusOnlinefair points and a year ago i would have said the same, but i've been able to main dragoon, nin, mnk, dnc, and paladin over the year and maybe if i could show you just how diluted it all is:Quote:
Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer
each melee has true north
each dps gives a form of rdps
each dps has a personal heal and all melees have role heal and mit
also you are forgetting brotherhood from monk
selfish dps aren't really selfish, their party buffs are simply "hidden" behind a consistent adps
it's also a false sense of give and take with your tank example
basically each tank has a free life which is utilised every single boss in a raid tier
it's become the norm and is no longer an identity for anyone other thank tank
in reality invuln only makes sense (to me) for paladins only - now then would this become an identity for a class vs a role
and it would wihtout a doubt make paladin meta
it's just honestly a lot of overwriting, a lot of buffs, and all for the sake of cookie for you, cookie for me, rather than "lets plan how each job brings different things to help the party as a whole and try to minimise meta"
whilst each class is currently self sufficient but it comes at the cost of the below
self sufficiency destroys being able to rely on others and identity is drastically lowered
WoW warlocks are just a really good example to class identity imo
not to be an ass, but thats exactly what the issue isQuote:
Originally Posted by Deveryn
4/5 (80%) of those whirlwinds of murder you just listed has a commonality with nearly every single job
chain being the culprit -
06-11-2022, 10:08 PMSaraideIt would lead to more pronounced metas for sure but saying it leads to more class complaints is potentially missleading. It would lead to more complaints from people that care a lot about job balance but probably less from people who would readily sacrifice job balance for uniqueness.Quote:
Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer
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06-11-2022, 10:16 PMMikey_RGoing through these as I have labelled them, the bold seems you just have an issue with role actions, not the job identities themselves.Quote:
Originally Posted by VirusOnline
For Brotherhood, considering what you quoted was about mitigation, Brotherhood has no mitigation properties.
Now, the italics. Every job has some form of raid dps increase, except the selfish DPS, those are just raid damage increases in disguise. I hope you realise that, with an argument like that, it doesn't matter how you swing it, you won't be happy.
And this is why, if you give one job something the others do not have, that job then becomes required. To get around this, you give all the necessary jobs this thing, just giving them a unique twist for the job. Suddenly, you have a job identity that doesn't exclude a job.Quote:
Originally Posted by VirusOnline
You don't minimise META by making everything unique, that just creates a stronger META where jobs will be more favourable for certain fights. Whilst I know this is what some people want, that is not SE mindset when balancing jobs.Quote:
Originally Posted by VirusOnline
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06-11-2022, 10:32 PMImoyeGames are primarily about having fun. Homogenization of jobs is pretty much inherently anti-fun because you reduce diversity, and as a consequence, also reduce choices in playstyle.Quote:
Originally Posted by IkaraGreydancer
People will always complain about class balance (which is also pretty common FFXIV) and there's nothing you can do to stop that.
Reducing the fun potential of a game because you are afraid of complaints is an extremely piss-poor and cowardly excuse (if it counts as an excuse at all). Complaints are a natural part of any game and should not be framed as a problem, but as welcoming feedback by caring players when something could be improved.
What ACTUALLY pisses people off is when devs don't adress imbalance and bad design decisions (hint hint: healer discussion).