Heavensward. Ast was terrible, pld was in a bad spot, brd was awful.
I remember drg having issues too.
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Don't forget MCH. That was pretty much dead on arrival.
So does AST. BRD is completely stripped of what it has been since the beginning of this game.
Even way back when in 1.0 even.
3.0 Bowmage was a huge wtf for example lol. I'm still upset they killed
4.0 BRD. Felt like they nailed the job and just killed it to be something similar to 5.0 MCH
only for DNC to take it's supportive place. Makes no sense. :/
They are currently imbalanced yes, but they were awful in heavensward. At least now they are playable. Just balance issues. Heavensward was playability issues.
IIRC in the start of heavensward, DRG still had the positional requirements on Heavy Thrust, meaning if you missed, boom, no buff. And if you missed any of them, your dps took a dive into the ground.
What you are describing is intentional, I don't think it's so much a lack of fresh ideas as much as deliberately simplifying all jobs and making all jobs within the roles function in a similar manner.
I suppose they are going for accessibility and job balance, but it certainly is making combat less engaging in my opinion.
Astro was the only outright unplayable job. Ironically, it's healing potencies were so abysmal at ShB launch, it came close to a repeat. Likewise, Paladin was in a bad spot but it was more comparable to Stormblood Dark Knight in that was simply weaker but not outright bad. The balance disparity in ShB is absolutely massive—enough an entire role is borderline useless.
The only job that was unplayable on HW launch was AST, though. I haven’t heard of PLD, MCH, or even BRD being unplayable in early HW—just ones like the latter feeling like crap to play because of the forced cast times, and some being weaker than they should be (BRD/MCH). None of the jobs are unplayable right now, but if the criterion is just “being in a bad spot”, basically every DPS save the Big 3 + NIN are in a bad spot. I’d say its worse now compared to HW.
Any healer. Any of them. Not for potencies, but for engagement. I’m fully prepared to believe that NIN and SMN feel bad to play right now, and they need fixes, but at least there are fun and powerful jobs available within their roles. The entire healer role is such a bore right now. Make any one of them fun and engaging with interesting things to fill their downtime with and a high skill ceiling and we can play that while the dps classes get their fixes and we wait on the other healers to get fixed after that.
(Preferably AST, since that’s in the worst place of all the healers at the moment, but any would do).