What jobs do you consider well designed?

Reaper feels pretty solid, with only Harvest Moon feeling kinda disconnected. Everything else feeds into a nice loop of powering up and then switching to avatar form to dish out the pain.

Summoner actually plays like a summoner now. Could use less flaring light effects, though.

BLM, RDM, DRG, PLD.

Others not so much and worst offenders are SMN, Physical ranged, Healers and tanks

I agree with Red Mage and Paladin, mostly because they manage to be good and fun but still get the flavor of the FF job in the way they play. Both of them feel right for jobs that have a long history in the series, and RDM is especially impressively done considering it's a jack of all trades in a game with strict party roles. I'd put Dancer in this sort of top-tier of balance as well - plenty to do, room for optimization, feels like you're actually dancing, and pays homage to when the job was used in other FF games to buff party members while attacking with blades.

I also think that Ninja feels like a Ninja, and even though I haven't played it for a couple expansions and its had its share of balance problems, I admire their commitment to keeping the flavor of ninjutsu and trying to tweak it to play better instead of just giving in and making it the same as every other melee DD. I might include Machinist here too, not as much history there but since the 5.0 rework to use Edgar's tools it's been pretty solid, but has some very weird specific issues (that really should be fixed by now).

Everyone else kind of errs too much on one side or the other of this balance between being good in FFXIV and actually acting like the job it's named. White Mage definitely feels like the FF job, but its design in MMO terms is somewhat lacking. Meanwhile, Black Mage is loved for having good MMO mechanisms that reward skill and knowledge of the game, but I think it's a huge pain in the ass that doesn't feel much like the FF staple.

Summoner to me is hugely improved but somehow still incredibly disappointing at the same time. I definitely feel more like a Summoner now, focusing entirely on actually summoning the classics, and it's much better feeling than definitely-not-a-Warlock-from-WoW. Yet their total number of actions is extremely low, and this huge overhaul was their opportunity to give us other summons like Shiva, Ramuh, Leviathan, etc. yet we're still stuck with the same five we had before even though they're no longer tied to any specific role and are just part of a rotation. Additionally, they really dropped the ball on lower level actions - the rotation only gets interesting at 86, and you only get the real summons at 90, leaving a lot of levels still not really feeling like a Summoner.

In PvE, Reaper is the best designed job as far as initial releases go. It has the best overall 'flow' of any melee-based jobs, with your oGCDs 'comboing' into your GCDs. It also has hands down the most interesting movement tool in the game. Shroud is very satisfying, although the PvP version probably needs some crowd-control protection as everyone tries to interrupt it once the initial Hysteria wears off and it's less intrinsically bursty than the other LBs.

I think that more generally across the history of the game, jobs that have less dramatic reworks tend to remain consistently good, because there's pretty much always backlash when there's a significant gameplay change. BLM is perennially good because they don't go in and demolish it every other expansion, so it becomes more and more refined over time instead of always starting from scratch.

None.

Looking at the kits of all Jobs, clearly shows that the Devs favor Jobs such as PLD, DRG and BLM more than the rest.

Every Job lacks a proper Identity and has been oversimplified and overtuned just for the sake of convenience. Every Job has a 123 Combo in one form or another, has oGCD's , some form of self Heal or dmg mitigation tool and the list goes on. Since every Job has a bit of everything, it eliminates the fact why Jobs exists in the first place, outside of covering for the Holy Trinity Roles.

Take a close look on the official Job descriptions of ANY Job on the FFXIV Website and see how it describes them.

Lets take Tanks for example, i dont see why ALL of them should have self healing (WAR even has the strongest Heal in the Game with 1200 Potency if you exclude Eggs Benediction). It makes sense for PLD to have Heals and MAYBE DRK in the form of Lifesteal effects, but WAR/GNB should have to rely instead of other methods, like having overall better Mitigation tools for example.

This is just one small part of the whole Iceberg and i think Squeenix, as well as the Community, forgets the "G" in MMORPG.

Blue Mage, I like how OP it is, makes me feel like a Ranger from Dragons Dogma using blast arrows against Death or Daimon, I also like like how it can do any role as well.

As far as the other jobs go, I'd say Red Mage, I can do decent damage, self heal and raise my other party members if they die.

Pld, rdm, ast. I like mch quite a lot as well, but I play with good ping.

First I'm going to disregard minor changes that certain jobs need and base it solely on how the job plays.

-BLM and RDM are well thought out. They have the same role yet different core mechanics that make them stand out from one another. They have enough varying depth of play that gives player options on what they enjoy more in terms of playstyle.

-SAM standout even after losing Kaiten because it's core playstyle is the same. RPR is another straight forward job with solid mechanics.

-BRD has changed a lot over the years but compared to MCH, it's a superstar. You still cycle through 3 song stances that build up to another song buff. I would have said DNC as well but it has to many skills that are just fluff garbage.

-Healers and tanks, yea no comment on that dumpster fire.

I prefer job design were each jobs core mechanics differ from another in it role class. It two jobs play almost the same, why bother picking one over the other aside from appearance. Also a job needs a gimmick otherwise it's just button salad that doesn't matter which you press.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Alaray

I can't say if that goes for /all/ melee utility damage buffs or not, since I don't know how the others interact with other jobs' rotations, resources, abilities, timings. But in DRG's case, it very much just feels like "I could have these not exist and, frankly, I probably wouldn't really notice the impact other than rDPS on ToS website go Lower."

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It is exactly the same for every other job as well, because SE designed it to be like that with EW.

Since all party buffs were standardized to be 2 minute cooldowns (and burst windows being mostly stadardized for 2 minutes as well) you pretty much just press them on CD and automatically sync them up with every other party buff. Outside of rare cases where phase changes make it impossible to burst every 2 minutes there is no optimization to these buffs anymore and it makes them feel incredibly bland.

honestly, none. there's huge negatives for every job i play, ever since the horrible Shadowbringers job changes came and ruined them all.

they've not recovered from it. probably never will.