FFXIV Job Design Feedback

Taking "Most people rate WHM a 5/10" to mean "WHM is enjoyable as-is!" is an...interpretation.

Wow, a class people find mediocre and don't really care about, how fun.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Taking "Most people rate WHM a 5/10" to mean "WHM is enjoyable as-is!" is an...interpretation.

Wow, a class people find mediocre and don't really care about, how fun.

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Hey! WHM was my go to job for doing Bozja stuff on lazy mode before Sage was added. :P

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Another weird one to me is Healers, but specifically the sub-breakdowns.

WHM has a lower approval than SCH (5.03 vs 5.24), but is more (as I said before) even across the board. That is, people feel less strongly about it in general in that it has no really lopsided "super high" and "super low" response values. It's kind of the "vanilla" of Healer Jobs; few people hate it, few people love it, most people find it acceptably un-obnoxious. Everything is in a pretty narrow band. But what really gets to me is the preferred version. 41.2% think Endwalker is the best iteration with 15.3% preferring ShB. The two were more or less identical, with the only significant changes being (a) Thin Air is now a 2 charge ability rather than a 15 sec duration CD, (b) Misery is now damage neutral instead of a minor DPS loss, (c) Assize has a slightly shorter CD of 40 sec instead of 45, (d) WHM now has Aquaveil as a targeted Rampart and Lilybell as a strong oGCD tool that is MOST useful (though not ONLY useful) for mulit-hit attacks that don't happen often. Overall, it was one of the least changed Jobs from ShB to EW, with most of the changes being well received.

Regardless, taken together, the post-SB/5.0 and on paradigm version of WHM (also perhaps known as the "post Aero 3 removal" versions) have a combined 56.5% approval. Further, "No Rework" (20%) + "Minor Rework" (37%) has a total of 57%, so on par with that.

But then look at SCH and AST.

SCH, in stark contrast to WHM, has 41.4% preferring SB (vs 15.3% for WHM) and a further 29.9% preferring HW. Taken together, that's a resounding 71.3% that prefer the HW/SB era. Only 2.3% preferred ShB, on par with the amount that preferred ARR. 46.8% want a "Major Rework", and when "Total Overhaul" (14.7%) is added in, that's 61.5% that want large changes to the Job, and clearly the SB iteration is VASTLY preferred. Only 9.2% want no rework and only 24.1%, a respectable minority but still a minority, prefer EW's incarnation of the Job the best. And unlike WHM, it can't lean on ShB's numbers to shore that up into a majority that like the post-SB paradigm.

AST is even more stark, and has the lowest approval (4.74). The prefer-SB version is ALREADY an outright majority of 55.6%. Adding in HW's 12.3% brings this up to 67.9%. Not quite SCH's 71.3%, but pretty high. Tellingly, there's not even a SINGLE vote for "No Rework" at this time, with "Major Rework" (45.0%) + "Total Overhaul" (29.0%) being a whopping 74% together.

It's pretty clear, despite SCH having a slightly higher approval rating than the "vanilla flavor" WHM that there's a strong desire for it to receive a significant rework back to something resembling the SB era, and AST's are desperate for a major shakeup as well.

WHMs, by contrast, seem to be relatively content, with a majority preferring the post-SB world (granted, SB WHM and the initial iteration of the "Lily" system...was pretty bad (the only era WHMs absolutely preferred less than SB was ARR; SB and ShB being tied at the moment) and wanting to see only minor changes to the Job (a lot of people seem to want Aero 3 and some mention more mitigation/party utility, but much beyond that is kind of vague).

And SGE, as a kind of "control group"(?), is oddly also the most popular (5.47), with 29.3% wanting "No Rework", 32.0% wanting a "Mini Rework" (together, these sum to 61.3%, a clear majority), vs 30.7% wanting a "Major Rework" and 8.0% wanting a "Total Overhaul" (taken together, 38.7%)

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Personally, I assumed (and I'd bet many others did) that 'No rework' doesn't mean 'absolutely zero changes', but 'receives the usual expansion additions, but they match well with it's current playstyle', like how Despair slotted in to BLM's rotation as a Fire Phase ender and SingleTarget Flare. As such, I also see 'mini rework' as something akin to Monk losing GL in 5.4 or NIN Mudras becoming GCD in 5.1, 'major rework' as DRK going into 5.0 or WAR in 4.2, and 'total overhaul' would I guess be something like what happened to MCH going into 5.0, or SMN going into 6.0.

WHM being 'EW is the favorite' is not actually all that surprising when you consider that the class has been constantly dunked on meta-wise by AST since 3.4, and it's taken until EW to make the Lily system 'not completely awful'. If you look at the 'extra comments' sections you can see a lot of people saying they want more damage buttons. Like, I sort by 'I think EW is the best iteration' and this is what I get (some say 'more damage actions' further in to the cell where it goes offscreen, but you can see it by clicking the cell and looking at the formula bar at the top):

https://i.gyazo.com/f0e61230af752074...161f974e10.png

This tells me that people are answering that 'EW is the favorite' not because of the whole kit, but because it's healing side of things actually feels functional now. Anyway, point I'm trying to make is, I wouldn't group 'mini rework' and 'no rework' together to try and paint supermajorities. A LOT of people were not happy about NIN Mudras becoming GCD at the time, saying it'd kill the class, it'd be massive damage loss and they'd be locked out of PF, the usual doomsaying. It'd be like if I were to group up all the non-'no rework' votes, because all of the people in the other 3 categories are asking for 'changes that extend beyond just the usual expansion additions', so their views are more aligned than 'no rework' players and say, 'mini rework' players? Some of that group want things to change a little bit, some want it to stay as is.

Or if you prefer, we can just look at the middle, and group 'mini' and 'major reworks' together, and consider the 'no rework' and 'total overhaul' sections as 'the extremes'. Then WHM's at 59%. Which would imply a change 'a little bit bigger than a mini rework' is the solution that would sort-of satisfy the most players. See, we can't just use the face value of the data on the pretty charts or we draw conclusions favorable to a specific view. So we need to look at the extra details sections to find out why people are putting the answers they are. And it seems to me that the answer is 'they like that the Lily system doesn't screw the player over now, and that it's actually functional', but also 'they don't like how WHM has redundant tools eg Medica when you have Rapture, Regen forgotten about because of Solace, etc, and there's a lack of damage tools to use'. So the answer for SE would presumably be 'add a couple more DPS moves to the rotation eg Water and Aero3 on short CDs, and prune some of the old healing tools like merging Cure1 and Cure2, or Medica1 and Medica2'. People probably don't vote SB as their favorite because that was a time where WHM was getting actively locked out of PF on some DCs. I voted HW because I liked the MP management aspect of things back then, a skill that has been all but forgotten about with how healers can run base piety in every fight pretty comfortably

As an aside, I'd like to think the idea I posted a while ago would fall under that category, a change list that is 'more than mini, less than major', since it readded a few extra skills like Divine Seal or Protect, or added some Shielding Lily spenders. And a way to actually cast Flood so Y'shtola can stop monopolizing it. As such, with a couple of tweaks discussed in the interim since then (Protect upgrading to PI, for example) I think the data shows that 'something like that' would be the solution to aim for. No ego or anything honest. My list of SGE wants is definitely more leaning towards 'Major rework' territory though, and the numbers imply that it's a bit too much of a change all at once, so that one's off the table. Maybe just add a couple of select things, like Eukrasian Phlegma.

As for AST, the reason nobody voted 'no rework' is likely because we already know it's getting one. The question is how big a rework it gets. If I had to put money on it, I'd expect AST to get 'Major' and DRG to get 'Mini'. For comparison, I'd call what happened between SB and SHB to the AST cards 'total overhaul', and what happened from SHB to EW 'halfway between mini and major' (Astrodyne sucks). Which means that in order to qualify for at least 'major rework' territory, which the 'total overhaul' crowd will grumble about but likely eventually go 'well it's better than nothing' about, something more than just 'the cards are now GCD' has to occur. A lot more, in fact. 'Cards have different effects again' would be a start, making Minor Arcana actually interesting would be another, giving us something to do beyond Malefic spam is another. Any two out of those three would be enough to put it in 'major rework' mode and satisfy that big chunk of the playerbase. Which means SE will make cards GCD to alleviate the APM issue and go 'ta-da we fixed it pls clap'

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Taking "Most people rate WHM a 5/10" to mean "WHM is enjoyable as-is!" is an...interpretation.

Wow, a class people find mediocre and don't really care about, how fun.

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TBF, we're so inundated with 8/10 and 9/10 ratings in life that we see anything below a 7 as 'dog shit bad', despite the average of the rating system being a 5. Our brains have skewed towards the higher numbers, because of how readily available something better is. Why would I watch a movie on Netflix that is 5/10, when so many 9/10 ones are available? So I see the healers all getting 5/10 (except AST, get dunked card boy) and that's... ok I guess. But why settle for a 5/10 role when you could put your time into learning to master an 8.5/10 gigachad class like BLM? So rather than going 'ok healers are 'literally mid', that's fine' we should look for ways to get them up to being an 8/10 as well. And 'don't touch them' isn't going to magically gain them 3 points of approval rating. Still waters grow stagnant, the longer we leave them 'pretty much as is' the lower that number would drop. If we did this survey at this time next expansion, with the healers just getting 'upgrade to nuke skill (10 potency up) and a new OGCD healing tool we didn't actually need' like this expansion, I'd estimate that those numbers would be 3.5 at the highest (and for AST it'd be at like a 2). Thankfully we have the AST rework coming, but it remains to be seen what that'll be like. And considering the last 'rework' it got was what put it in this mess, I expect a lot more people than just me have a degree of pessimism about it

It heartens me that the overall view on Dragoon in 6.0 is positive. There are ways in which it could be better, but I do think it does pretty well as is. That's why I hope they reconsider majorly reworking it in 7.0. That "we want to rework DRG because it's too busy" makes me worry.

When I interpret the results, all of the results show a majority of "no rework" for healers. Looks like as AST, you will have by far the worst experience soloing - absolutely unacceptable- (I would agree) , but all healers are roughly the same (meh) in casual and overall experience.

The revised spreadsheets are excellent it should put SE to shame - they should be the ones doing this and sharing it with us. Thank you!

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Originally Posted by EliaStormblade

It heartens me that the overall view on Dragoon in 6.0 is positive. There are ways in which it could be better, but I do think it does pretty well as is. That's why I hope they reconsider majorly reworking it in 7.0. That "we want to rework DRG because it's too busy" makes me worry.

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I just want Dragonsight gone and I would main it again. I dislike that skill a lot.

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Originally Posted by Remish

I just want Dragonsight gone and I would main it again. I dislike that skill a lot.

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It's basically the one thing I harp on too. That and that I would like more mobility options and maybe something a little more exciting than Spineshatter Dive as an oGCD.

But yeah, it's mainly just Dragon Sight, lol.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

Taking "Most people rate WHM a 5/10" to mean "WHM is enjoyable as-is!" is an...interpretation.

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Start by learning statistics. An average rating of 5/10 isn't "most people rate". It's an average of all ratings. If you'd like, I can explain the difference between average, median, mode, bi-modal, and tri-modal to you?

Also, where did I say "WHM is enjoyable as-is!"? I swear, if you spent less time making up things I didn't say and only addressing the things I said, we MIGHT even get along!

My point was, of the Healers, SGE is actually moderately well regarded and that a majority of WHM responses seem to be people saying post-SB WHM is what they want, generally with just a minor tweak like returning Aero 3 to them. Contrast with SCH and AST, both of which STRONGLY want the pre-ShB versions of their Jobs back, and AST in particular where everyone wants a rework.

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

When I interpret the results, all of the results show a majority of "no rework" for healers.

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Could you explain cos I'm confused, when I look, 'no rework' is the smallest chunk of the chart for each of the healers (it doesn't even appear on the AST one), so I'm maybe misunderstanding what you mean by it being 'the majority'. Unless you meant the opposite, that the majority say 'we need at least something to change for healer X'

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Originally Posted by EliaStormblade

It's basically the one thing I harp on too. That and that I would like more mobility options and maybe something a little more exciting than Spineshatter Dive as an oGCD.

But yeah, it's mainly just Dragon Sight, lol.

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While back I suggested somewhere that maybe they could just merge DragonSight as a bonus effect on Litany, since you pop both at 2min anyway. Rather than 10% crit and a seperate 'you and your ally get 5% damage', it'd be more like, idk, 10% crit and 2-3% damage for all, with some potency adjustments to rebalance it. I also would suggest merging Spineshatter with Dragonfire Dive (it upgrades at 50) because I'd argue DFD really sucks too in terms of impact. A 2min OGCD that does 400p, wow, meanwhile GNB gets 350p on a 30s CD, later upgrading to like 800p (Blasting Zone). Or Bow Shock being 650p over it's full duration, on a 1min CD. So yeh, make DFD a 1min CD that replaces Spineshatter, move the potency from SS to DFD to compensate for the loss as needed, and have DFD get the 2 charge trait instead.

Also make Stardiver either way faster to avoid clipping, or potentially make it a GCD with a ridiculous potency (this would be potentially interesting because we could LifeSurge it to guarantee it crits). If it stays OGCD though, they can remove Life Surge.

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

When I interpret the results, all of the results show a majority of "no rework" for healers.

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Could you explain cos I'm confused, when I look, 'no rework' is the smallest chunk of the chart for each of the healers (it doesn't even appear on the AST one), so I'm maybe misunderstanding what you mean by it being 'the majority'. Unless you meant the opposite, that the majority say 'we need at least something to change for healer X'

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Originally Posted by EliaStormblade

It's basically the one thing I harp on too. That and that I would like more mobility options and maybe something a little more exciting than Spineshatter Dive as an oGCD.

But yeah, it's mainly just Dragon Sight, lol.

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While back I suggested somewhere that maybe they could just merge DragonSight as a bonus effect on Litany, since you pop both at 2min anyway. Rather than 10% crit and a seperate 'you and your ally get 5% damage', it'd be more like, idk, 10% crit and 2-3% damage for all, with some potency adjustments to rebalance it. I also would suggest merging Spineshatter with Dragonfire Dive (it upgrades at 50) because I'd argue DFD really sucks too in terms of impact. A 2min OGCD that does 400p, wow, meanwhile GNB gets 350p on a 30s CD, later upgrading to like 800p (Blasting Zone). Or Bow Shock being 650p over it's full duration, on a 1min CD. So yeh, make DFD a 1min CD that replaces Spineshatter, move the potency from SS to DFD to compensate for the loss as needed, and have DFD get the 2 charge trait instead.

Also make Stardiver either way faster to avoid clipping, or potentially make it a GCD with a ridiculous potency (this would be potentially interesting because we could LifeSurge it to guarantee it crits). If it stays OGCD though, they can remove Life Surge.

edit: oh and since people posting doesn't appear in real time and the post appeared after I posted:

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Start by learning statistics. An average rating of 5/10 isn't "most people rate". It's an average of all ratings. If you'd like, I can explain the difference between average, median, mode, bi-modal, and tri-modal to you?

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Condescension aside, the mode is 'the value that occurs the most often in a dataset'

https://i.gyazo.com/2e502c2bff8622b6...70680b5996.png

So... 5/10. At least, in 'challenging content', it is. In anything else, it's a sad looking 1/10. And if you want to look at the median instead, well, that also goes no higher than a 5. So I'd say Semi's assessment, as bluntly worded as it was, is fair

@Ty, btw I just saw something 'odd', WHM's Modes are 1 1 5, SCH's are 1 1 7. WHM's 'total' is 5, SCH's is 1. Is that intended or is the formula for that cell borked (same with SGE maybe) (thank you again though and sorry I just have an eye for stuff that looks like typo's)

On my phone atm, when I get to my computer I’ll see if there’s an error on the formulas.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

@Ty, btw I just saw something 'odd', WHM's Modes are 1 1 5, SCH's are 1 1 7. WHM's 'total' is 5, SCH's is 1. Is that intended or is the formula for that cell borked (same with SGE maybe) (thank you again though and sorry I just have an eye for stuff that looks like typo's)

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Are you referring to the overall ratings when you say "total"? The overall rating was for the "how would you rate [insert job here] overall" so those are the modes of that question, not a collected value of the solo/casual/challenging scores. Does that resolve your confusion or am I misunderstanding your concern?

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

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I somewhat agree on WHM. I think the overall majority could probably be expressed as "Keep the EW WHM, but give us back Aero 3" (with people noting it can upgrade to Banish). If they returned Aero 3 and had it upgrade to Banish in the next expansion, added a charge to something, gave WHM a party mitigation (the other requested thing - my personal ideal would be give Plenary a 5% damage reduction effect since that would give WHM an extra "lesser" party mitigation on a 60 sec CD and already suits the "when lots of big healing will be needed" use-case of PI), that would probably make the vast majority of WHM's happy. Some want the elemental theme back from spells, but that's more an aesthetic change that might also alienate others.

As for the groupings, the idea behind me looking at them that way is "what does the majority want?", because (outside of AST with SB), there is no majority position in any of the other cases. It also doesn't help that the terms are vague; does "No Rework" mean no CHANGES or just the mechanics not changing, and in what way? Is adding a second DoT a mechanics change or not? (Very likely depends on who you ask). Likewise, is a "Minor Rework" adding another damage ability or two, or would that not be a rework? Or would that be a "Major Rework"? If not, what IS a major rework? And what's a "Total Overhaul"? The terms are JUST vague enough that they depend on the person.

Like I would like WHM to get a 1 min CD party mitigation and a second AOE attack. To me, that's a Minor Rework. I'd also LOVE (but don't expect it) for WHM to have all GCD heals turned into Blood Lily generators to make GCD healing damage neutral on WHM. That feels like it would be a Major Rework to me, but some might consider it a Minor Rework or even No Rework.

However, people do have a general gist of thing they're saying, with some overlap. So in seeking a majority, it's fair to say that people who want No Rework, if they were forced to accept Minor or Major, would side with Minor instead. Likewise, MANY (though not all) people wanting a Minor Rework, if forced to side with No Rework or Total Overhaul would pick No Rework. It's kind of like the argument for something other than First Past the Post Voting: "Tiny and worried tarsiers would have voted for the big calm gorilla without tarsier in the race. So if their candidate can't win, they want their vote to go to the gorilla instead." ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8XOZJkozfI ; not sure STV is actually a system I like or not, but the quote applies. :D)

We often see this in polling where "disagree" and "strongly disagree" are combined, as are "agree" and "strongly agree", despite the terms being somewhat subjective such that one person's "agree" might be another's "strongly agree" or a different person's (slightly) "disagree". So it's kind of what we have to work with.

The point is, to say "majority wants", the right way to look at it is "what are people's first and second choices if we eliminate the extreme choices?" If we removed Total Rework and No Change, the TR guys would vote Major Rework and the NC would vote Minor Rework. If we flip it and remove the middle, again, Major would likely side with Total over No Change, and Minor would likely side with No Change over Total Rework.

"Why can't we combine the middle?". Simple, because you aren't maximizing satisfaction. Even looking at it as I have, let's say, for the sake of argument, we went with Minor Rework. Obviously, the No Change people aren't PERFECTLY happy, but they're happier with Minor than they would be with Major or Total. Conversely, the Major people aren't totally happy, but they're happier than they would be with No Change, and probably would split 40/60 for Minor/Total, meaning at least some of them would also be content with a Minor rework. It's like if a center-right party wins, the far-left is unhappy, but the center-left and far-right are at least mildly content vs other outcomes. By "splitting the difference" for a "half-way between minor and major rework", you're also ignoring that more people lean towards the minor side than the major side. People on the low end of Minor would probably be happier with No Change than they would be with a Major or half-Major rework. Moreover, No Change is approximately the same in number to Major, so why does Major get the higher billing there?

This would be like taking a poll with results of "strongly disagree", "disagree", "agree", and "strongly agree", and saying "well, disagree and agree are kind of the same thing", which doesn't make sense to do. There's just not really a way where that makes a lot of sense overall, especially since Minor Rework tends to mean a few tweaks or a new ability or two, while Major Rework tends to imply large system changes, which the Minor Rework crew probably do not wish for. Grouping them together is thus somewhat odd.

The only REAL way to check, though, is to do a contingent question of "What would be your second choice?"

Not only that, if we extended that to the eras, you'd have the case of SB + ShB, which is a minority of a bit less than 40%...and makes no sense, as the two aren't at all alike, while ShB/EW are and HW/SB somewhat are. So in addition to not even being a majority, it doesn't make sense as an implementation.

This is because the specific case of WHM is that ShB and EW WHM are NEARLY identical. The way the average player engages with the Job is effectively the same. So the two of those being the majority seems pretty reasonable, while a SB/ShB mix would not.

I'll also note that NO ONE is contesting me using this EXACT SAME methodology with SCH and AST...because proponents of change/going back to SB era agree with the conclusion there, and so have no fault with how I arrived at it. Using that exact same metric results in WHM being appraised as I did.

I also somewhat disagree with your solution. We don't know that people want "Water" (though people want Aero 3, that seems obvious) "on shore CDs" (original Aero 3 didn't have a CD, I don't think...)

The one problem with the Lily tools is that the "base" versions aren't locked. You can't use Afflatus Rapture when you have no Lilies but you can use Medica 1. To remove Medica 1, you would need to make Rapture usable whether or not you had Lilies. Which could absolutely be done. Just make it have an MP cost (still instant cast) when you don't have a Lily. We know this is possible because BLM has a somewhat similar system with Flare and Umbral Hearts where a Heart is consumed when you have them up (cutting Flare's cost to 1/3rd) and if you don't have one, you can still use Flare, it just has the full MP cost. The issue is that Rapture/Solace are instant cast, so if the idea was to remove Medica and Cure 2, they'd have to retain that. There are times I hold a Lily and use a cast heal instead because I want the lily for an upcoming mechanic where I need an instant cast and movement. So the one not pruned would have to retain this flexibility at all times because you can no longer choose whether to spend the Lily or hold it, so it must retain that functionality whether or not you use a Lily on it. Also, Medica 2 can't be pruned for that exchange unless you give Rapture a HoT (which is probably a bad idea since people sometimes use them in rapid succession); it has a different use case. Not only that, if the goal is to make Healers a bit more complex, then removing the ability to activate a HoT and then use suplemental burst healing for additional damage spikes, then allow the HoT to heal any residual damage is lost.

It is interesting to me that the same people who often complain Healers are too simple propose making their healing toolkits...simpler. I'm sure there's something to infer there, but I honestly have no idea what. Regardless, merging Medica with Rapture and/or Cure 1 into Cure 2 into Solace I have no issue with as long as Rapture/Solace can be spammed like Medica/Cure 2 can. I HATE PvP WHM's Cure 2 having charges. What if I need 3? Well, tough luck! Yeah, hate that. That's dumb. If Rapture/Solace want to be that, then we'd have to change how they work to essentially be they're Medica/Cure 2 (instant cast, though) all the time, and if you have a Lily, they have no MP cost and nourish the Blood Lily. This would, of course, make WHM far more mobile.

And WHM was at its absolute worst iteration in SB - that's why it has so few votes. I'm honestly half-surprised ARR didn't get more votes than SB for WHM, but most of those people probably voted HW instead.

We already have Divine Seal (Temperance) and we honestly should have Magicked Barrier (just working for both physical and magical) as that's how they want "Protect" spells to work now. As I said before, give Plenary a 5% (or even 10%) damage reduction and you have Protect.

As for "rotation", people have largely been adamant they don't want a "rotation", they just want Aero 3 back. Granted, a lot will be pissed when it upgrades to Banish, but it'll still be there either way. Not everyone wants elemental spells on a Holy Mage.

As for SGE: It needs something changed about Addersting/Toxicon. Maybe Eukrasian Dosis ticks have a chance to proc it or Dosis casts or something. That or it 2x Dosis damage so it's damage neutral with casting the GCD shield, but that kind of goes against how SGE is supposed to be played via mainly doing damage and weaving oGCD tools for supplemental healing and mitigation.

As for AST: I disagree. I think the reason nobody voted No Rework is because everyone wants one (though probably not the one they'll get...). 37.2% of DRGs want No Change even though they're also getting a rework in 7.0, so I don't think "acceptance" is the answer for why no ASTs are voting that way. We'll see what the Devs come up with, though. They might knock it out of the park...though I'd wager it's far more likely there'll just be a lot of pissed off (even more pissed off) ASTs in 7.0, if past trends are any indication.

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I don't disagree with you on the 8/10 vs 9/10 vs 5/10, though I disagree with your projection. If 7.0 continues the trend, then a lot of the people who hate Healers now will probably quit the role/game. They'll still hate the Healers now, though. Meanwhile the people that are fine with them will probably continue to be. As one Philip J. Fry once said regarding TV audiences, they don't want something new and daring, they want the same thing they've seen a thousand times before. The jaded people would be even more jaded...but let's be honest, most of them are already giving ratings of 1, so they aren't going to shift the average much spamming the 1 result even harder...

It will be interesting seeing what the AST rework does, though. But I really do think that SCH needs a rework as well. Our discussions in the Healer forum, on Reddit, the long form survey results, and these results all indicate it's needed.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Could you explain cos I'm confused, when I look, 'no rework' is the smallest chunk of the chart for each of the healers (it doesn't even appear on the AST one), so I'm maybe misunderstanding what you mean by it being 'the majority'.

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I'm not her, but No Rework (21.0%) is more than Total Overhaul (18.1%) on WHM, and essentially tied with Major Rework (22.9%). It's not the smallest chunk. For SGE, No Rework (29.6%) is essentially tied with Major Rework (30.9%), both of which are just behind Mini Rework (32.1%), and well above Total Overhaul (7.4%).

No single one is a majority, though Major Rework is 44.7% for SCH and 44.2% for AST. No Rework is larger than Total Overhaul for WHM and SGE, and essentially tied with Major in both cases, and with Mini as well in the case of SGE.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Condescension aside,

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Read her posts, then note I only respond in kind to her using it. If she didn't use it, my responses to her wouldn't, either. And mine is less than hers at any rate. I prefer discussing the actual data since that's both objective and more interesting to me. It's why I don't use words like "fun" in a general sense like that, since I know (and frequently state) that fun is subjective and different people have fun with different things, and that's okay. The entire reason I came up with the "4 Healers" idea in the first place was based on that idea that fun is different to different people. I will use people's self-identified numeric "satisfaction" rates, since that's them converting their subjective viewpoint in to an objective (ish) mathematical data point that can be used in things like averages and statistical analyses.

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the mode is 'the value that occurs the most often in a dataset'

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Correct. Which is why I asked her if she knew what bi-modal and tri-modal meant. Quick and dirty graph of the overall satisfaction numbers:

https://i.imgur.com/MRSg2DU.jpg

Not that it matters since WHM is very level across the board. When one says "most people", it's not the mode. Mode is "number that appears most often", not "most people". Most people means "majority of responses". In a total of 103 responses, that would be 52. No vote number has 52 votes for WHM. 5 and 1 are tied at 14. But 14 is << 52. (52 is ~3.7x 14). So there's no outright "most" in that sense.

In fact, them being the same (or near the same) is an example of bi-modal behavior, where there are two modes/peaks to the curve. In the case of WHM, it's a double peak (1 and 5) curve with a rather fat tail, meaning the values to the right that are less than the second peak are still substantial, as opposed, to, say, the BLM curve where the numbers to the left are super tiny compared to the peak at 10. SCH and AST's curves are just all over the place. AST is almost the reverse with more people in the 6-7 range, bit doesn't have the 9-10 to weight the average higher. SCH is...just weird. And SGE...the SGE numbers have that tri-modal thing going most explicitly, with three peaks, at 1, 5, and 10, where 5 got 13 replies, 10 got 12, and 1 got 11.

Bi-modal/tri-modal behavior means there's not really an average or consensus, there are several groups of people that have different desires that may not overlap much or be very compatible. Like SGE is the most extreme case of this, since there are some people that love it as it is, hate it as it is, and are neutral as it is. There's not really a way to please all those people, so the Job direction should probably be to pick one and run with it instead of try to dilute it across all three and continue to only please a middling amount of people. It's interesting to note that most of the Healers seem to have this behavior in some form, either the bi-modal or tri-modal arrangements - SCH is also arguably tri-modal at 1, 5/6, and 8.

And no, not looking at "challenging content". Looking at overall rating. We're not grading/making Jobs only for challenging content. And, honestly, overall rating should help your argument since it will bring the numbers down a bit (since it's weighted down by the solo and casual scores; contrast 5.18 challenging satisfaction vs only 5.01 overall). :)

So Semi's assessment was incorrect.

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Also, Ty:

Aside: Future polls should probably just use 1-5. Note that 1-10 is unbalanced.

1-2-3-4 5 6-7-8-9-10

You're splitting where the middle is 5.5 instead of 5, so do 5s count with 1-4, or do they count with 6-10? Scale should be 0-10 or 1-5. In the former case, 5 would be the middle and in the latter case, 3 would be the middle. There's no true middle option, but I suspect most people picking 5 mean to pick a middle option when they do so.

0-1-2-3-4 _5_ 6-7-8-9-10
Or
1-2 _3_ 4-5

By removing a middle option, you're forcing people to say they like or dislike something even if they're entirely neutral, and because people generally don't realize this (most people would think of 5 in this scale as being "neutral/undecided"), it quirks the numbers a bit since people saying they're neutral are actually lowering the average rather than further cementing it.

Honestly, I think 1-5 would work best. 0-10 is a little TOO gradiated. Like what does a 4 say? Does the person like it? Not like it? Neutral? How is it different from a 3? Makes it harder to draw distinct conclusions.

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As for the Modes: Noticed that, too, but it's because they're different questions. You aren't taking Solo + Casual + Challenge / 3 to get Overall. Overall is its own separate question.

Why aren’t you using whole numbers in your graph? It shouldn’t make any difference, but looks weird

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Originally Posted by fulminating

Why aren’t you using whole numbers in your graph? It shouldn’t make any difference, but looks weird

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Just cause it was the quickest way to hit bar graph and form them. I was trying to figure out a way to do it better, but I use Excel so little for that, I couldn't force it to unless I included 0s for some reason, which was just weird.

But yeah, it doesn't make any difference because none of the lines (other than the 1 and 10) are a X.0, so they aren't double dipping. 1-1.9 is only 1s since 2 > 1.9. 1.9-2.8 is only 2s since 1 < 1.9, 3 > 2.8, and only 2 falls in that range. 9.1-10 is only 10s since 9 < 9.1. So it doesn't change the numbers, it just happened to be what it wanted to default to, and after confirming it wasn't misrepresenting the data, I just didn't want to wrestle with it further.

I considered editing my post to say 'unless you meant 'well actually 5/10 only happens 14 times, compared to all of the non-5/10 results that total 100something' but then I decided against it, because it makes so little sense to use as a line of reasoning. And yeh I used 'challenging content' numbers because they were the higher satisfaction levels. Not dragged down, as it were, thinking that if those indicate 5/10 and they're the best possible showing, then that's pretty damning

As for rework/majority, I guess my whole argument falls apart because I was wrong about WHM's 'no rework' chunk being the smallest, gg, what the hell was I looking at then, maybe I had one of the other sheets open and got them mixed up. Anyway, I'd call whichever has the larger percentage 'the majority' even if it's not over 50%. Else you'll never have any definitive 'answer' without having to band groups together. An then there'd be disputes over whether Mini goes with No, or Mini with Major, or if Total Overhaul is too extreme for Major to align with and etc. It's like politics, cos just like politics, people cast their votes, nothing gets done, repeat

If you wanted to group stuff up based on how much they align, there'd be three bandings, no rework (people who want zero change), mini rework (people who want a bit of a change) and then major/total as a group (because they want big change). I'd expect that most of the people who want a total overhaul would grumble a bit but ultimately accept a 'major rework'. I had put 'total overhaul' for WHM. If it got 'a rework on the level of DRK in 5.0' (and it was targeted at the issues the class has, not 'we added 6 more healing tools') I'd be like 'well at least they did something to try and fix it' and move on, I think. And in that regard, WHM would then be about 40% for a big change, and about 38% for a small change. So clearly, the answer is to leave it as is, maybe add another healing GCD like Cure 4 (sarcasm). Even if we don't group anything though, just settling on 'the biggest number wins' like FPTP, 'no rework' still isn't winning any seats. Alternatively, we could take the 'median' and cancel out the most extreme view from each side over and over until we're left with 'the guy in the middle', which by the looks of it would be 'Mini, but on the side that is slightly more towards Major', which I assume means that instead of 2 extra GCDs to the DPS rotation, we'd get 2 and a 60s selfbuff or something

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Originally Posted by ty_taurus

Are you referring to the overall ratings when you say "total"? The overall rating was for the "how would you rate [insert job here] overall" so those are the modes of that question, not a collected value of the solo/casual/challenging scores. Does that resolve your confusion or am I misunderstanding your concern?

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Yeh, I had just done something quite stressful in a different game and adrenaline was up, so brainfog set in and thinking turned off. I got it now, just wish I could work out why I thought that was the way to interpret that, the joys of neurodivergence I guess, sometimes you make yourself look like an idiot (like that), sometimes you... still look like an idiot, but you did a flip while doing it so at least it was entertaining. This blunder, there was no flip, it was just disappointing

Oh yeh and, in a shocking turn of events, I actually agree with Ren that having 5.5 be the average is a little bit odd. Solution is, next time you run one of these, give people the option to vote 0/10. It'd be interesting to see how many of those 1 ratings are actually 0's in disguise

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Could you explain cos I'm confused, when I look, 'no rework' is the smallest chunk of the chart for each of the healers (it doesn't even appear on the AST one), so I'm maybe misunderstanding what you mean by it being 'the majority'. Unless you meant the opposite, that the majority say 'we need at least something to change for healer X'



While back I suggested somewhere that maybe they could just merge DragonSight as a bonus effect on Litany, since you pop both at 2min anyway. Rather than 10% crit and a seperate 'you and your ally get 5% damage', it'd be more like, idk, 10% crit and 2-3% damage for all, with some potency adjustments to rebalance it. I also would suggest merging Spineshatter with Dragonfire Dive (it upgrades at 50) because I'd argue DFD really sucks too in terms of impact. A 2min OGCD that does 400p, wow, meanwhile GNB gets 350p on a 30s CD, later upgrading to like 800p (Blasting Zone). Or Bow Shock being 650p over it's full duration, on a 1min CD. So yeh, make DFD a 1min CD that replaces Spineshatter, move the potency from SS to DFD to compensate for the loss as needed, and have DFD get the 2 charge trait instead.

Also make Stardiver either way faster to avoid clipping, or potentially make it a GCD with a ridiculous potency (this would be potentially interesting because we could LifeSurge it to guarantee it crits). If it stays OGCD though, they can remove Life Surge.

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To reply to your question, I wrote that somewhat rapidly, what i meant to say, and didn't even get all my edits in- what say from my view a majority of the healers wanted a rework. Now I see both of you and Renathras are discussing what a "rework" is- and to me that is a more interesting discussing - since the extremes are self evident i.e. no and full re-work- however knowing what is meant by a minor and a major re-work is not as clear to me for the survey respondents, unless the verbatim analysis was done- I may have missed that.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

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Plurality.

The largest single group, but still less than 50% and thus "the largest minority" in a case where there is no majority.

Problem with catering exclusively to those people is that it is technically a case of the majority not wanting what those people want, and so the majority isn't getting what they like. So the trick is to see what is the largest either first OR second choice total. Hence Ranked Choice Voting/Instant Runoff being a good way to determine that.

As for 5/10 - a net rating of around "neutral" honestly isn't terrible. One interesting thing is (baring SMN because of maybe(?) salt bombing), none of the Jobs rates 4 or lower. The "weakest" Jobs otherwise (AST) are pretty close to "neutral" satisfaction. Assuming people with 5/10 ratings actually mean neutral.

Also, not going to hammer you on the No Rework thing. Not sure what you were looking at, but maybe...I dunno, another tab or the different eras people preferred?

Since I DO like when we can find things to agree on - you agree with my assessment of SCH and AST based on the data, yes? That it's pretty clear a majority really want their SB kits back?

I don't think it's fair to group Major/Total while not grouping Mini/No or Mini/Major. That just happens to be the grouping that you'd pick if you really wanted to push for big changes, but I don't think it's a fair appraisal of what the majority want. Besides which, as I noted with WHM, even adding them like that; the numbers as of now:

No Change: 21.0%
Mini: 38.1%
Major: 22.9%
Total: 18.1%

Major + Total is still only 41%, which is a minority. It's barely even bigger than the people that want JUST a mini rework (38.1% is only 2.9% less). So even if we grouped them that way, the WHM majority falls into the camp of "Doesn't want a Major or Total rework" since 59.1% aren't voting for either Major nor Total reworks.

CONVERSELY, though:

SCH:
No Change: 9.6%
Mini: 29.8%
Major: 44.7%
Total: 15.8%

Major + Total here would be 60.5%, a clear majority.

AST:
No Change: 0.0%
Mini: 27.9%
Major: 44.2%
Total: 27.9%

Major + Total = 72.1%, again a clear majority.

Those two have a clear verdict, though note that Mini = Total for AST (meaning Major should be the objective), and Min > Total for SCH (again meaning Major should be the objective. For WHM, Mini > all, Mini is the natural plurality (doesn't have to add anything to it and is still the plurality), and Mini + No or Mini + Major is > any other combination anyway. This means for WHM, the objective should be a very minor rework, on the lower end of Mini. Which seems to be what people want judging by the replies to mostly leave it the same, add a mitigation and Aero 3/Banish, and kind of call it a day.

But no, I don't think it's fair to group as three separate ones with Major and Total together. Either we need to redo the survey with only the three options or we have to look at all four and see which would be "natural allies" to get to a majority (an absolute > 50% majority, which does require combining some). Like I'd say No Change, but be content with a Minor Rework. So if that logic means to you you can combine Major and Total, then it must also mean we can combine No With Minor. Keep in mind, I'm saying the larger/more moderate of the coalition is the coalition policy. If we're forming a "coalition government", the No Change will caucus with Mini before they would with Major or Total, and even if Major and Total are caucusing together, they're still not a majority (50%+1) and thus couldn't form a government unless they also bring some Minis and/or Nos on board. Mini is already the largest vote recipient in the first round of voting, so they get to form the core of the coalition to begin with, and they can reach a majority causing with either No or Major, and the No people would be quick to accept that caucus/coalition offer.

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Also, no worries on honest mistakes. /hug

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

To reply to your question, I wrote that somewhat rapidly, what i meant to say, and didn't even get all my edits in- what say from my view a majority of the healers wanted a rework. Now I see both of you and Renathras are discussing what a "rework" is- and to me that is a more interesting discussing - since the extremes are self evident i.e. no and full re-work- however knowing what is meant by a minor and a major re-work is not as clear to me for the survey respondents, unless the verbatim analysis was done- I may have missed that.

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Agreed. Total rework is fairly obvious and No Change is self-explanatory. Minor and Major are a bit trickier. They're nebulous, but still concrete ENOUGH to talk about, even if the specifics are kind of off. Fortunately, the written out answers can help with understanding there. E.g. how most WHM ones that actually state specifics amount to "Give us a short duration party mitigation and give us Aero 3/Banish"; those are pretty actionable items and really wouldn't change the overall Job itself all that much. A different lead button to hit in AOE trash packs and a button to hit when you'd like to hit Temperance but it's on CD (especially if that button was an effect added to an existing button, like Plenary)

I tend to think of things like this as "what would the most natural second choices be?"

The extreme positions generally have the least votes. Total Overhaul (WHM, SGE) or No Change (SCH, AST) are the least picked. So the question is, what would their second choice be? For No Change, it's naturally going to be Mini Rework, and for Total Overhaul it's going to be Major Rework. So then we look at the numbers again and see if that's a majority. If it is, yay, we have our answer. If it's not, we look at what else is needed. AST has Mini and Total equal, and Major the plurality, so Major change seems to be the obvious solution there. The others aren't AS clear cut, but Major is the plurality for SCH (which would be the second choice for Total) and Minor is the plurality for WHM and SGE (which, when the No votes are added to them becomes the majority coalition)

EDIT: Also, unless someone specifically asks otherwise (case by case basis, that), I use the pronouns of their avatar. /shrug That's the closest thing (given forums) to a chosen identity being expressed, and the most fair and neutral way to choose a base pronoun set. But yeah...irrelevant to the topic, just that's the why.

Right, but the problem with the whole 'caucus' thing is that it doesn't always follow that line exactly. For example, if you have three parties, one wants to keep tuition fees as they are (so, 'no rework' to the education system), one wants to lower tuition fees by 50%, (mini), and one wants to abolish fees completely and make universities be paid for out of the taxes (major/total overhaul, pick one), it's more likely those asking for 'lower tuition fees by 50%' will align with the 'remove tuition fees entirely' group if it'd give them a majority, as their goals are more similar (that is, making university education more accessible). We did have a party that wanted no rework to tuition fees align with the one asking for free university (so they could make a coalition majority), and the first thing that went out the window was the plans to change tuition fees. Crazy what people do to get power isn't it?

Anyway, back in FFXIV, I'd have assumed that essentially, people at the higher end of the scale (total reworkers) would grumble and complain, but eventually temper expectations and move to the 'major rework party', because 'its not as much as what I'd hoped for but at least it's something'. And then if that pair didn't have the majority, it'd happen again with Majors grumbling and complaining and moving down to Mini (and Totals getting very disillusioned with the system and vowing never to vote again because it's all a sham). Then, I would expect Mini to actually be split, with some leaning towards No and some towards Major. I can't see every single Mini Reworker deciding 'yes lets align with 'no changes at all' to get a majority', because they're fundamentally opposed. Not as much as Major vs No, but one wants a rework and one does not, I don't think there's any room to come to much of an agreement. What are they gonna do, barter around the table saying

'ok we get 2 new damage buttons and a 60s selfbuff, and in return you get a new Lily spender and a trait that makes Regen/Medica2 ticks have a chance to proc an additional burst of healing'
'1 damage button and a selfbuff, and we want a 60s mit tool on top of the stuff you listed'
'2 damage buttons, no selfbuff'
'deal'

https://i.gyazo.com/eec54666fe058618...2dd5607fb9.png

Chart's currently looking like this. If we don't have a majority, we can do what sometimes happens in politics, and prune away the extremes, Total and No just cancel each other out, they're equal. That leaves us with Major, and Mini. But neither are the 'midpoint' on this because there were only 4 options, there's no 'center ground'. So while Mini is larger than Major, it'd have to swing towards the Major side of Mini, because there was 2 groups on the Major side and one on the No side. At least, that's how I see it. If you just go Mini rework, they're happy they got what they wanted. But the No's didn't (it's too much change for them), and the Major's and Total's didn't (it's not enough). And since Major+Total adds up to more than 'No', the rework should, theoretically, lean more towards Major.

If we assume Mini (as I have been working off of so far) means 'akin to when they made NIN mudra's GCD', or 'when they just removed GL from MNK in 5.4', then I'd assume that a 'Mini rework to WHM' would look something like what I suggested, but without the Shielding Lily spenders. So Banish as a 15s GCD, new damage neutral heal tool that is charged by doing damage, and rescaling Dia to be much shorter duration (so it feels more bursty). If they wanted to move it into 'Mini, leaning towards Major', they could add one extra thing for the damage side that doesn't take too much thought, like Cleric Stance as a 10% damage selfbuff for 10s, 1min CD. Upending the whole Pure/Barrier split with the Shielding Lilies would be at least 'Major rework' grounds, so I would cut that part. Rescale Dia to 12s duration, Banish as a 15s GCD, a new gauge that charges from doing damage (and maybe healing, but at a lower rate) a new heal spell that is damage neutral, Cleric as the 1min window selfbuff (like Trick) and your Protect>PI idea. A damage skill, a slightly retuned damage skill, more healing, a new mit, and a new CD to do damage with in the 1min windows, that'd be pretty close to what I'd hope for from a 'Mini, leaning Major' rework.

edit since idk where else to put it: new idea, if we add Cleric as a 1min selfbuff, we can have a new gauge element that tracks if you casted a Misery. And at the 2min window where we use our second Misery, we could have it instead be Purgation from PVP, doing even more damage. So you'd alternate a Misery and a Purgation each minute. Can even put them on the same button to save space if you really want

These are both some interesting comments. I would only add that from my perspective , seeing that a "5" overall for each healer shows that there is very good consistency . So is someone's goal was " can each healer do the job"- then no healer is better or worse than the other.

However, if I want a job that I consider to be interesting/fun/engaging/ well designed - if I knew nothing about FFXIV and I saw "5" across the board - I would definitely be leery of maining a healer as a '5" is not a satisfactory score - I don't know if any of you have every calculated NPS scores, but that's in not the neighbourhood of people who would recommend a job - it's in the neighbourhood of people who would discourage people from selecting that job.

Return Miasma, Miasma II, Shadow Flare and Bane to Scholar, that is all

I find it funny how tanks are so average (6 to 7 out of 10) and the main opinion (mode) is sitting somewhere between 6 to 8 out of 10. So it's decently good, but could use improvement.

Melee DPS are sitting at 6 to 8 out of 10 on average, but the main opinion moves is somewhere between 8 to 10 out of 10 with Samurai being the odd one out at 7 out of 10 after losing Kaiten.
Caster DPS are 7 to 8 out of 10 on average, but the main opinion is a solid 10 with the exception of Summoner because its rotation is lacking substance in what the level 90 job's rotation could just be the lv 60 job's rotation (resulting in a low score of 4 on average and most people saying 1 out of 10).
Ranged DPS are sitting somewhere between a 5.5 to 7.5 out of 10, but the main opinion is 7 to 8 out of 10 with the exception of Bard after its gameplay changed (mode being 6 out of 10).

And then healers are just averaged 4.5 to 5 out of 10, but the main opinion is just a 1 across the board outside of challenging content.

I wish they never got rid of Aero 3. It had amazing animation.

Don't know why this didn't strike me until now but enjoyment of a job does not accurately describe or capture my overall thoughts on how it is designed. I enjoy playing Monk (always have, even ShB MNK which was complete garbage), but that doesn't necessarily mean I think it's well designed- quite the opposite in fact.

I gave solo play for MNK a low score because it just... feels weak. Brotherhood feels awful to use in general, but it's at its absolute worst in solo instances/content. I don't know why or how they managed to screw it up even more, but ever since EW dropped it has had this disgusting delay on the Chakra gain which is an issue that is only exacerbated with high ping. Double weaving is more important now on EW MNK than it was in its ShB iteration, which only piles onto the problem since your weave slots are going to be dependent on whether Brotherhood wants to play nice today. I've seen a few submissions in the document describe this problem as well, wishing they could play MNK without needing to rely on plugins like Noclippy.

I gave MNK a mini-rework rating because in my eyes I see that as the scale of mechanics or skills being reworked, whereas major-reworks are more like ShB DRK/MCH. MNK needs a lot of work, but it doesn't need the nuclear option like those two jobs. Most of MNK's problems stem from one singular mechanic anyway, and that's Chakra. Easily the biggest cancer tumour of the job and I don't think it's controversial to say that it's up there with SCH's Fae gauge and PLD's Oath gauge as the worst job elements in the game.

An RNG based mechanic just does not fit well on the job with the points I've said above (limited weave windows and and overall ping-unfriendly), especially when it has no form of leniency or capability of banking unlike other proc based mechanics like DNC's Fan Dances/Saber Dance or BRD's Repertoire procs. Meaning there is absolutely no thought or strategy to Chakra, as soon as you get 5, you immediately burn it. That's it, that's all there is to it, and yet despite how simple it is the mechanic is deeply rooted into the job's design in a way that does not feel cohesive or intuitive at all. Case in point, MNK's disconnect kit: Meditate is the job's "ranged filler GCD" stand in, but it overlaps with Six Sided Star which does not allow you to use Meditate in conjunction with it, which also overlaps with Anatman which is a channel skill locked onto a GCD and does not generate Chakra at all.

Maybe it could have been considered """fine""" in previous iterations of Monk when the job had more systems to manage like Greased Lightning, Positionals or stance dancing so it could afford to have a simpler gauge on top of all of that, but in its current form? Blitz and Chakra are literally the only two things it has. It needs to be reworked. It's a complete shitshow of a mechanic and I'm genuinely shocked that no one else realises how garbage its design is.

Compiled SAM threads regarding Kaiten removal and wanting it back -> " Click Here " <- it's a crap ton. I stopped compiling at like idk 155 threads? give or take. And the video references as well from multiple creators. I just started losing count. SAM is still fun, but many do still want it back.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

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Right, but we don't have three parties here. We have four parties here. So the example would be one wanting to tuition rates to increase, one wanting to keep them as they are, one wanting them to be cut, and one wanting them abolished. That was my point, we'd have to ask the question with ONLY three options before we could look at them as only three options.

Since we have all four, we need to work in the context of that.

It's also interesting to me that results leveled off a few days ago, but have started coming in again all more negative. EXCEPT (ironically?) for SCH, where they're oddly positive.

Anyway, the problem with the names "Mini" and "Major" is, again, it depends on who you ask. For example, your idea is to add a short CD GCD, an opposite Misery that heals that you can only get by doing damage, making the DoT duration shorter so it's more difficult to maintain/juggle. Depending on the person, those would be Major changes. Minor would be something like "Add Aero 3 and call it a day". A really minor tweak that doesn't really alter the gameplay experience much or at all. Honestly, a shielding Lily spender would be less of a rework. Adding Aero 3 (though at least half of that has got to be people missing the animation, lol - that's why I support it. :D) would already arguably do the Dia thing anyway, and could have a 15 sec CD and 15 sec duration and do both of those things at the same time.

I also doubt they'll ever add in an ability called Cleric anything, just because of the legacy of that name. Besides, that's basically a slightly different Presence of Mind, isn't it? Just making PoM 60 sec CD would achieve the same result. We don't want to end up with PLD where we have FoF and Requiescat that may as well be one ability but aren't because...button bloat. There's no real good answer for that one otherwise.

I also am not sure WHM needs a new spell. Though I think (as I said in the Healer forums) having Lilies work as some kind of Eukrasia toggle might actually be an interesting solution since new heals could be added over time as just variations on the GCD heals across the board for WHM instead of as distinct abilities/buttons. But that (or making all GCD heals on WHM generate 1/3rd Blood Lily) WOULD be more in the area of major overhaul. Oddly, I'd be fine with that if it was along the lines I said before.

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Originally Posted by IDontPetLalas

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I guess, for better or worse, I'm a "glass half full" kind of guy. I see 5, I think "pretty decent; nothing to write home about, but not bad by any means".

EDIT:

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Originally Posted by Remish

I wish they never got rid of Aero 3. It had amazing animation.

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Hehehe, knew it! :D

I'm right there with ya, though!

Heavensward Boomer energy is strong with DRK lol

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Originally Posted by Renathras

Right, but we don't have three parties here. We have four parties here. So the example would be one wanting to tuition rates to increase, one wanting to keep them as they are, one wanting them to be cut, and one wanting them abolished. That was my point, we'd have to ask the question with ONLY three options before we could look at them as only three options.

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Right, but 'no change' means 'no change', so it'd be more like them being 'rates stay as is' as one end of the scale, and then the rest of the scale being 'rates cut by 30%', 'rates cut by 60%' and 'the government actually pays the students a grant to go to uni, and it also doesn't have fees at all'. I don't see how 'Mini rework' can equate to 'the fees stay exactly as is' because nothing is getting reworked in that example.

As for what constitutes a Mini or Major rework, that's down to each person. As I've said before, I consider 'no' to be the level of small changes you see in an expansion update, such as how WHM got a new Glare rank, all of it's heals got bumped in potency by a trait, Aquaveil and Lilybell. 'Aero 3 returns and call it a day' is in that territory if it is the only change that occurs. Mini rework to me means NIN GCD Mudras, it's not a massive thing that completely flips the gameplay of the class, but it was a noticeable change, and it also made TCJ feel 'not bloody awful' in the same patch. What I've listed, minus one point (eg, without the 'do damage charge gauge' and associated heal) would be what I'd consider to fall in the center of Mini. That heal having a new gauge element attached is what drags the list up towards Major (but not completely into), as it'd require a whole new graphical element to be made. Now, if these changes all made it in, alongside getting a bunch of new stuff for the expansion at the same time, then yeh I can see why it'd start to be considered a Major rework. So I'd take out some of them to be implemented at a later date (in the X.1 patch most likely), and I'd nominate the gauge and it's associated heal because they're the ones that'd take the most work, so delaying just those allows for the rest to more easily be done in time for X.0 release

Major is SHB DRK, removing Dark Arts and replacing it with Edge/Flood, removing MP management almost entirely (now it's just 'use if about to overcap, save for burst), changing TBN break bonus from 'gives blood' to 'gives a proc that allows a free Edge', removing Blood Weapon's haste, changing Delirium from 'extend BW duration' to 'grants X uses of Bloodspiller' to mirror WAR. That's quite a list of changes, and so it goes in 'Major'

And then there's Total Overhaul. And I'd consider very few of these to have occurred so far in the game, most stuff falls into Major. 2.1 WAR, 4.0 BRD (removal of the cast times), 5.0 MCH (adding the whole multitool thing, removing the permanent-turret and the raidbuff from hypercharge), and 6.0 SMN (the best example of 'totally overhauling a class'). Now, you might have different views on what constitutes each category and that's fine, Ty probably could have done with putting examples on the question like 'How much does this class need a rework? No rework refers to 'just the usual expansion updates', Mini refers to change on the scale of (whatever change that is small), Major refers to change on the scale of(whatever change is kinda big), and Total Overhaul refers to change on the scale of (probably 6.0 SMN as the example)

As for Cleric, fine, name it Seraph Strike, problem solved. And if FOF/Req is an issue, there's solutions. Like have Confiteor apply Req's effect and remove Req entirely (the burst window already starts with FOF anyway), or better yet, just delete Req and have Conf combo do it's 'Req damage' naturally, since Confiteor is a 60s CD it's gated off anyway. Also, again, NIN has Trick at 1min for selfbuff and Mug at 2 for raidbuffing. We don't hear for calls for Trick to be removed because it's so synonymous with NIN (and it'd leave the job with literally zero reason to use Suiton), so I don't see why having a 1min and a 2min buff is such an issue for WHM. You also have to remember, I think 4.1 WAR was peak tank design, and that had a 2min big burst (IR Berserk) and a smaller 1 min burst (just Berserk), so maybe I'm just more attuned to the idea

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Originally Posted by CelestiCer

Compiled SAM threads regarding Kaiten removal and wanting it back -> " Click Here " <- it's a crap ton. I stopped compiling at like idk 155 threads? give or take. And the video references as well from multiple creators. I just started losing count. SAM is still fun, but many do still want it back.

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I find it hilarious and sad in equal measure that we have so many people, with so many posts, giving their view that Kaiten's removal was not good, and now this survey has so many responses saying 'extra info: yeh uhh kaiten removal was dumb pls bring back'. And yet SE won't listen. Maybe everyone has to drop the job and it'll get changed, like the old BowMage issue.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

I find it hilarious and sad in equal measure that we have so many people, with so many posts, giving their view that Kaiten's removal was not good, and now this survey has so many responses saying 'extra info: yeh uhh kaiten removal was dumb pls bring back'. And yet SE won't listen. Maybe everyone has to drop the job and it'll get changed, like the old BowMage issue.

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True. Square does not listen to Player-Feedback. We all know the phrases by now.

• We are sorry for the inconvenience...
• Give it a try...
• Hope you like it...
• Give us your feedback...

They'll refer you to the forums where you get ignored.

WHM wanting more then just Glare? Lol. MCH identity? pff. RDM can die with their lack of self-mits you got to keep your utility tax, fun. Everything's an AoE circle that's all we can handle after all. Screw your Gameplay, your Dots, your Pets and your Kaiten it's way easier on the devs this way/ for balancing reasons. Saw those reworks we did? DRG's and AST's? " Look forward to it ". /s

My expectations are non-existing. I skip everything after Kaiten removal and the only thing that's appealing are friends I made, housing decors and getting helpers high by helping PF groups clear raids.

Yoshi P's final argument to me makes no sense... " Just go Play Ultimate ". A job does not get more fun by doing a specific content, not for me. Savage is a snooze fest and I tried Ultimate, the experience is not fun. I had more fun spamming Kaiten for 8 hours farming Fates with a cone shaped Tenka Goken? over P6S. I can do that for days. Content does not make my Job fun. Making and keeping our gameplay Fun? makes our Job fun. And once our Job remains fun? all content regardless difficulty remains Fun. I'll spam Bozja again, I'll do fates, I'll queue up expert even when I am maxed on Tomes, I'll do every boring piece of content mindlessly because My job is Fun. Take that away? yeah... then " Take a break from the Game when it's not good " I guess right?

I just wanted to chime in again and say that I'm happy that quite some people appreciated HW BRD, that was one of my favourite iterations of BRD, I greatly enjoyed both bowmage and gunmage. But I concede that a great many people hated it and it was a bad thing to give BRD cast times just to match with MCH, also SB BRD was also a lot of fun and quite well-designed.

However, I still firmly believe that them backtracking on their original vision of MCH in HW caused irreparable damage to the design as a whole. The SB form of MCH was obviously hastily slapped together and was a hot mess (heh, heat) of a job. I really wished there was a way to preserve the gameplay of gunmage and I firmly believe that it's a huge mistake to force onto BRD what MCH is designed for and vice versa.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I just wanted to chime in again and say that I'm happy that quite some people appreciated HW BRD, that was one of my favourite iterations of BRD, I greatly enjoyed both bowmage and gunmage. But I concede that a great many people hated it and it was a bad thing to give BRD cast times just to match with MCH, also SB BRD was also a lot of fun and quite well-designed.

However, I still firmly believe that them backtracking on their original vision of MCH in HW caused irreparable damage to the design as a whole. The SB form of MCH was obviously hastily slapped together and was a hot mess (heh, heat) of a job. I really wished there was a way to preserve the gameplay of gunmage and I firmly believe that it's a huge mistake to force onto BRD what MCH is designed for and vice versa.

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Honestly after Heavensward’s BRD/MCH buff-battle every patch I genuinely don’t think the developers are even going to bother trying to balance them. Bard will forever remain a lacklustre, boring dps with some barely existent ‘party support’ (if you can call dps skills that incidentally buff the party ‘support’ lol). Machinist will forever remain the Wish version of Black Mage / Samurai, built upon the same concept yet literally incapable of utilising it because ranged tax.

Then there’s Dancer which I honestly think is a devs main or something lol, they basically took everything good from the ranged dps role and slapped it all on Dancer. And even then from what I understand Dancer is mostly used for dps/parse padding and not because it’s a valuable job to take lol.

The whole ranged dps subcategory desperately needs to reworked.
Being a shit dps ‘that can move a bit more than everyone else’ is the most ridiculous justification for a subcategory to exist lol.
‘You can play this sub role, but you’ll be eternally shit, your gameplay is going to be dull as hell…’ Bard is literally just hitting Burst Shot and Procs now, and yet only healers complain about having a one/two button rotation. I honestly feel like Bard is just as bad as healers in terms of ‘one-button spam’ and occasionally smashing an oGCD with your face. Least Bards buff party members when they run their face across the keyboard lol. I mean their only unique support ability now is fucking Mantra now, the Monk ability lol. Except Monks is on a shorter cool-down so they literally offer the party more frequently used unique support than the so-called ‘support dps’. Bard’s is 5% stronger, sure, but honestly I’d rather use it more frequently than get a measly 5% extra healing (that nobody ever wants lol)

‘Oh but it’s ok, you can support the party - with dps. Except your dps is never as good as anyone else’s. So you’re a support whose support is their damage…but you cant do damage…you can’t use meaningful support because bAlAnCe (mocking the devs here not the players lol).

Basically if you want to play a ranged dps you’re either relegated to Dancer for someone’s parses or you’re a Bard / Machinist which is just a shittier version of something else (Dancer and Black Mage / Samurai respectively)

If you ask me the developers desperately need to go way back to the original concepts for the jobs. Bards buff the party by casting songs (1.5 cast times reduce necessity of ranged taxes and doesn’t affect oGCD usage), Machinists debuff the enemy with their tools, auto-turrets and the like, Dancers provide stronger buffs but they’re contingent on the Dance Partner. All this ‘dps padding to make it look like they’re as good as the others except they never are’ is just getting really silly at this point.

Well, BRD has a spammed move, a proc off of that spammed move, a short OGCD with charges (bloodletter), a short OGCD that forces a proc (empyreal arrow), a gauge that charges each time you get a proc to spend on a powerful hit (apex), dots (lets call it one because iron jaws resets both), and three separate 'stances' which all have slightly differing gameplay, and cause the procs to affect you differently. To have parity with healers, BRD would have to lose the songs (imagine you're in army's paeon all the time), Bloodletter, one of the two dots, the Apex gauge, Refulgent, and Empyreal would stay, but changed to be 40s CD

I didn't care much for bow mage in HW, but I found the cast times on MCH completely fine. It was designed around the idea of the cast times, the ammo made it instantcast, procs of your 123 made those instantcast, it worked together. Now we have constant flips and jumps everytime you want to do a simple 123. Can we rework the 5 Heat Blasts into 'Heat Blast, Heated Slug, Split, Clean, finisher of some sort (maybe the bazooka from diadem)' so we don't have to see the flips constantly, they get hella stale with how constant they are (and it's an excuse to bring back regular Clean Shot's animation)

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

I didn't care much for bow mage in HW, but I found the cast times on MCH completely fine. It was designed around the idea of the cast times, the ammo made it instantcast, procs of your 123 made those instantcast, it worked together. Now we have constant flips and jumps everytime you want to do a simple 123. Can we rework the 5 Heat Blasts into 'Heat Blast, Heated Slug, Split, Clean, finisher of some sort (maybe the bazooka from diadem)' so we don't have to see the flips constantly, they get hella stale with how constant they are (and it's an excuse to bring back regular Clean Shot's animation)

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Oh, I agree with you that the constant flipping is ridiculous, they've also already proven that they can do a nice casting animation for MCH in PvP. Honestly, I'd rather they just get rid of Hypercharge and the "Spam 5 in a row" gameplay and just bring back the old longer Wildfire where you actually had to set up beforehand and use your brain during it for maximum impact.

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

Right, but 'no change' means 'no change', so it'd be more like them being 'rates stay as is' as one end of the scale, and then the rest of the scale being 'rates cut by 30%', 'rates cut by 60%' and 'the government actually pays the students a grant to go to uni, and it also doesn't have fees at all'. I don't see how 'Mini rework' can equate to 'the fees stay exactly as is' because nothing is getting reworked in that example.

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I'm pointing out there are four camps in the question bank, so that's the best way to make a parallel. It's very likely if you asked "remove DPS buttons", there would be a few takers (not many, but more than zero - had a few in the long-form survey say that's what they wanted, too). But we can't just make what we want, we have to work with the questions asked. No change isn't necessarily the opposite of "Major Overhaul", but that's another point entirely.

Again, subjective causes problems. I'd consider "No change" to be literally NO CHANGE, so Expansion alterations would be considered very minor changes, especially if they actually change the rotation at all. For example, WAR got Primal Rend, and while it's very small, it changes the rotation of the Job, so that's not "No change".

I think the problem is you're thinking of what the categories mean to you and thinking that's what everyone else meant by the terms. I'm kind of pointing out that's the problems with the terms being vague. Even "No change" we can debate over the meaning, and it's the one that would be the most straightforward of the options.

Anyway, the short version is that the AST/SCH results indicate people largely want a major rework, leaning towards total rework for AST and leaning towards minor rework for SCH (but pretty major overall), and that WHM/SGE players want minor changes that don't alter the Jobs too much but nudge around the edges.

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Originally Posted by Aravell

I just wanted to chime in again and say that I'm happy that quite some people appreciated HW BRD, that was one of my favourite iterations of BRD, I greatly enjoyed both bowmage and gunmage. But I concede that a great many people hated it and it was a bad thing to give BRD cast times just to match with MCH, also SB BRD was also a lot of fun and quite well-designed.

However, I still firmly believe that them backtracking on their original vision of MCH in HW caused irreparable damage to the design as a whole. The SB form of MCH was obviously hastily slapped together and was a hot mess (heh, heat) of a job. I really wished there was a way to preserve the gameplay of gunmage and I firmly believe that it's a huge mistake to force onto BRD what MCH is designed for and vice versa.

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Not in a mechanics sense (I didn't play either back then except in passing) but in a lore/physics of weapons sense, I always felt cast bars on an archer made more sense than cast bars on a gunner. Having shot both guns and bows irl, With bows you have the draw, set, release, which all take a good deal more time than shooting a gun. Gun aiming is also faster (to me) than bow aiming. For people of equal skill, bows will always have slower fire rates (cast times) than guns since both can acquire their target extremely quickly and from there it's just an argument of moving your finger a cm vs notching, drawing, and releasing with a bow.

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Originally Posted by Connor

Then there’s Dancer which I honestly think is a devs main or something lol, they basically took everything good from the ranged dps role and slapped it all on Dancer.

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Agreed. This was so dumb to me.

ShB Announcement: We don't think Jobs should be reliant on other Jobs to do their full damage, so we're removing the party buffs from BRD.
Players: Okay, so no more buff abilities for other players, got i-
ShB Announcement: Incidentally, we're adding DNC as the new Job.
Players: Ah, cool, so it's a new Hea-
ShB Announcement: It will be a Ranged Physical DPS Job.
Players: A...what?
ShB Announcement: And it will buff allies so they can do their full damage.
Players: The...the what now..?

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Originally Posted by Connor

The whole ranged dps subcategory desperately needs to reworked.

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Agreed. I actually REALLY LIKE current MCH, but a "selfish DPS" in a subrole that has a DPS tax makes no darn sense, and the role as a whole is fubar.

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Originally Posted by Connor

I honestly feel like Bard is just as bad as healers in terms of ‘one-button spam’ and occasionally smashing an oGCD with your face. Least Bards buff party members when they run their face across the keyboard lol.

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It is one reason I think this survey (or the participants) are somehow particularly tilted against Healers. In most forums where BRD is talked about (both here and elsewhere), it's almost universally being ragged on. Yet here, it's scoring higher than Healers despite people being more negative on it basically everywhere. Which kinda tells me the survey results are being affected by a bit of sample bias or something.

Very happy and relieved to see a lot of Bard DoT defenders around!!

I find it fascinating that it *must* be bias. Has to be. Sampling or otherwise. No *true* population canvassing could possibly report dislike or boredom toward job design that involves rotting your brain mashing the Glare key six million times over the course of two expansions. It's such a brilliantly-designed set of jobs. No way people could find them boring or poorly-designed. It's got to be the encounter design fooling them into thinking that Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare Glare is boring. Has to be. It's. So. Fun.

Yeh if I see Bard at a 6 and healers overall at a 5 (or slightly less for AST), it doesn't say to me 'there is sampling bias', it tells me that both camps see there's a lot of room for improvement. With BRD, I assume that quite a few believe a previous incarnation of BRD was better, likely SB when the DOTs were a more integral part of your kit (they triggered your procs on crit after all), and they still had powerful useful utility skills like Refresh, Palisade, Tactician (lol TP), Minne's CD was busted good back then too iirc

Now, if they were to delete the DOTs from BRD because they don't really do anything anymore, I'd expect that 6 to go straight down to a 3 or less, because then they would be one step closer to that glorious 'one button, one braincell, impossible to f*** up' gameplay that everyone subconsciously desires /s

edit: my theory on why BRD is 6 and healers are 5 or less: they're both in the position of 'they function i guess, but the older versions were way more fun'. But the difference that gives BRD that extra point is that 'BRD retains some of it's interesting gameplay when doing solo stuff', you still have your songs, your DOTs, your procs

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Originally Posted by Renathras

I'm pointing out there are four camps in the question bank, so that's the best way to make a parallel. It's very likely if you asked "remove DPS buttons", there would be a few takers (not many, but more than zero - had a few in the long-form survey say that's what they wanted, too). But we can't just make what we want, we have to work with the questions asked. No change isn't necessarily the opposite of "Major Overhaul", but that's another point entirely.

Again, subjective causes problems. I'd consider "No change" to be literally NO CHANGE, so Expansion alterations would be considered very minor changes, especially if they actually change the rotation at all. For example, WAR got Primal Rend, and while it's very small, it changes the rotation of the Job, so that's not "No change".

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If you want to look at 'no change' as literally zero changes, that's fine. But you have to also remember, 'absolutely zero changes whatsoever' is never going to occur when an expansion comes out (which would be the best time to rework things anyway). So right off the bat, that category is an impossibility, because 'some changes' is a literal selling point for the expansion. While I can't speak for anyone else, I'd assume that at least some respondents would have thought similarly

The only way 'no changes at all' would work is if the reworks occurred in a random patch like 'oh it's 7.1 here's a big overhaul of how SCH works, have fun learning how it works in two weeks before the new ultimate lands', so that the expansion changes had already occurred by that point. But then, if the expansion had added stuff, that breaks the whole 'no changes at all' clause, doesn't it, what a conundrum

It’s true that what constitutes as a minor or major rework may differ depending on who you ask, but in general, a “rework” in games defines a fundamental shift in the play style of a class or character. As Roe stated, that does not mean literally nothing is added or removed, because that is never the case. Every expansion, every job is required to include new abilities because if they don’t, there is a fear of backlash.

No rework was meant to imply a normal amount of new actions, and maybe some subtle cleaning up of existing tools. For example, I do not think the removal of Shadowbringers Fluid Aura constitutes as a rework, and I imagine most people would agree. But I think we’re getting in the weeds over the semantics. The point of that question was to see how people felt about how each job’s gameplay feels.

No rework = this job has good gameplay and nothing specific is needed.

Minor rework = there is some clunkiness that needs to be ironed out, but otherwise the job is good.

Major rework = the job has a good concept, but does not feel fun/satisfying/rewarding to play and/or is not functioning properly.

Overhaul = The job is completely failing to deliver on its design and/or job fantasy and needs to be rebuilt from the ground up.

I wanted to keep each answer short and clear though, which is why I didn’t try to add that much detail to each response option. If it’s too long wordy, it may have gotten ignored.

Wow, I didn't realize there were 5 melee but only 3 casters and ranged jobs.

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Originally Posted by SieyaM

Wow, I didn't realize there were 5 melee but only 3 casters and ranged jobs.

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That's due to them splitting melee into subtypes by gear.

Lightweight STR based (MNK, SAM)
Mediumweight STR Based (DRG, RPR)
Lightweight DEX Based (NIN)

Then again they also used to just call the rest Ranged DPS and separate them into 2 subtypes.

Physical Ranged DPS (BRD, MCH, DNC)
Magical Ranged DPS (BLM, SMN, RDM)