Rebalancing Suggestions for 4.0

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Originally Posted by Rawrz

I run my SCH with 5 hotbars + extended, but when each fairy is out I'll use only 2 + extended, until I need to switch out or resummon, then i will use my back 5th hotbar, so I may have 5 hotbars, but I only actively access 2 + extended on each fairy. :O

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Well, color me impressed, haha! Back in 2.0 I had my SMN and SCH pet abilities compartmentalized, but in a way that clashed with my standard cross hotbar setup. Normally the abilities I have of L2+R2 and R2+L2 are the same for each individual job so that I don't have to worry about using the wrong combination in the heat of the moment. Obviously, that didn't work for SMN and SCH. That lead to me, more often than not, getting the wrong L2 and R2 combination that corresponded to my current pet. I tried other hotbar setups, but found that any more than two, plus a third for items, barring the expanded hotbar, was too much of a hassle for me to tab (quick or otherwise) through.

Admittedly, with a good amount of practice I could probably work something out, but as it stands these jobs just have too many abilities for me to comfortably play with, and at the level I want to, which I feel is most important to me when I run content with others. I want to play SCH and SMN well, but I never really feel like I'm playing them at my best just because of the hotbar management I find myself struggling with. Which sucks because I really like SCH, haha!

Well here's a thought, people don't like casting times on Range classes aka BRD and MCH, so how do we fix that? You can't just give them back mobility without acknowledging that it would imbalance their ability to be threatened by AOE effects while effecting their DPS. It would just give them that edge to pretty much "ignore' mechanics because they have less to worry about.

So here's a thought that came to mind, what makes BRD and MCH unique? BRD is suppose to be Instrumental and MCH has Turrets along with their bullets to manipulate their procs while BRD uses DoT to manipulate it's procs.

So what if the stationary concept to those jobs was based on them using their special abilities, music and turrets.

When a brd plays a song they obtain a similar circular effect like BLM's Ecochain which they have to stay in to keep the effect of the song. When they move out they have x seconds to get back in before the song effect is both negated and reduced back to it's base amount.

For example, take Foe Requiem, let's just say for simplistic sake you activate the song, get the circular AOE and fight, it startsat a 5% boost with a max of 20% let's say, for every 10 seconds you stay on the circle it goes up 1% and you would have abilities that help you manipulate the range and even add new potencies to the song.

Say you could stack another song on top of your current song, that would mean it would be tougher to upkeep, something like 1 seconds lost everyone song, so when you have 2 songs up you star to lose 2 seconds per seond but you are free to remove them as you please.

The main gimmick behind BRD then coudl be a true BRD, stacking their songs to increase their dmg potency as well as buff/enfeeble the battlefield. Some songs could even be from comboing other songs that give you a short burst of perks like Straight Shot guaranteed crit for next 10 seconds or Venom Bite potency double for next 3 seconds. Make the job more reactive, keep the stationary aspect but instead make that stationary aspect a means to enhance the song aspect of the job to give the player a chance to do more with the job instead of being a brd that plays like BLM. The final balance I would add to that concept would be to allow an ability that let's the Brd move their "Tune" to another postion at the cost of half the potency and duration of the "Tune" for content in which you may move around a lot.

As for MCH, it would be similar but more focused on Turrets and maybe even going back to the concept SE originally wanted to do to have more attatchments for the job. The Rook could be a single target DPS with a focus on DoT additions while Bishop could be an AOE with focus on enfeebling. And the MCH would be able to take the turret up three stages with 2 options per stage to customize the Turret to their choosing based on the flow of combat.The two options per would basically be Rook= DPS or DOT and Bishop= AOE DPS or AOE Enfeeble

But in order to upkeep these Turrets the Machinst would need to setup the Turret and then place a Controller to stand by to help augment the Turret, the longer they stand by it the quicker they can upgrade the turret but if they move away from the controler the Turret begins to downgrade one stage at a time til it's back to 0.

Pretty much the idea is to just create a unique way to have those jobs need to stand still without it being based on their DPS abilities but rather their unique traits. If executed properly I think people would have a lot more fun with those jobs if they really are against the way they currently play.

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Originally Posted by Critical-Limit

Did you miss the memo where all abilities on all jobs will be made easier? Basically the complexity they brought with 3.0 jobs they think that was a bad idea and they're going to "basics"

So it's not out of the realm for OP to ask for everything that just makes their job easier.

However i dislike that future but it doesn't seem there is enough people wanting to keep the jobs that complicated.

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good news, i really prefered coil era, where i can play BLM and offer a decent dps in a raid setting, even clearing T13 with it, when my main was Warrior was fun to do.
but in alexander era, i can't BLM in any of the raids let alone voidark without lousing my enocian too fast.

For Dark Knight:

Give Plunge a new potency of 500, no, 600
Put Plunge on the GCD
Give Plunge a 50% chance of inflicting critical damage
A successful Plunge spreads a highly damaging DoT to surrounding enemies
Every Dark Knight ability now has a chance to end with an instant Plunge

That should do for now.

Scrap the CC system and just give the jobs skills with the effects of those old CC skills.

If you want a CC system in place then actually make an actual CC system where you spend points on skills you normally wouldn't have access to.

Also each player should have "their own" LB meter. It works in PvP it can work everywhere else as well.

so many of the jobs has just become overblown and complicated just for complication's sake. There are a few things they should just drop outright, they are buttons for the sake of being buttons. Cleric stance for instance (link the spells to mind), but the winner has to be ninja's wasp/viper pointlessness. You never want to turn it off, and if the only reason to swap is to use silence or stun. The 20% boost without the "button" and jugulate always stuns, mug steals a tiny HP amount. Just about all classes have similar messy/clunky "skills" and "stances" that should be innate with the job/class rather than adding to button/keybind bloat. Tank stances are also not useful, an emnity reduction skill if you happen to be off-tanking makes more sense.

They also need to give mch/brd back their mobility. HW wiped out a whole type of class/gameplay that needs to come back. Not all ranged need to be casters.

Sadly, they botched blm so badly I see no hope for it. Ley lines should just be a speed buff and not some ground thing, enochian needs a reset like kassastu.

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Originally Posted by Zafrei

Biggest improvement they could make is a pruning of the skills. Merge similar skills and remove obsolete ones. 20+ skill rotations should really be a thing of the past, imo 12 is really the sweet spot for a core rotation, with an additional bar for consumables and situational skills.

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Dear god, please no. Ability pruning can be overdone to disastrous effect. Just look at WoW now. If you level from 1 you can have as much as 8 levels without any new skill and combat boils down to pressing a single button over and over again. Maybe two if you are lucky. What I would instead suggest is abilities that replace older ones. Kinda like how summons work for the two arcanist jobs.

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Originally Posted by Critical-Limit

Did you miss the memo where all abilities on all jobs will be made easier? Basically the complexity they brought with 3.0 jobs they think that was a bad idea and they're going to "basics"

So it's not out of the realm for OP to ask for everything that just makes their job easier.

However i dislike that future but it doesn't seem there is enough people wanting to keep the jobs that complicated.

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Maybe I didn't understand correctly but I think what Yoshie-P actually said that the change in difficulty between 2.0 and 3.0 was too big, so for 4.0 they won't throw in completely new mechanics in your face. That doesn't mean the 3.0 changes will be removed or anything. In fact they will most likely not change that much at all, to make sure you don't have to relearn your class every expansion.

My BLM suggestion:
I guess we'll get another 5 skills (62/64/66/68/70)
Keep eno and fire/ice-4, just add 2 high CD buffs and 3 skills we can use during GCD.

Thats it, i like BLM :D

BRD needs to have WM scrapped, AoEs reworked, and song added + tweaked.

As it is Wide Volley has no point, same potency as Quick Nock, but it cost more, for a suggestion I'd make Volley into a placed AoE like Flaming Arrow.

With my suggestion, WM could be removed by making Flaming Arrow work like Fist of Fire works for MNK.

For songs, I'd combine Ballad and Paeon into a single song, remove the enmity that Foes grants, add a debuff for nonmagic based class, and add the songs Jehantel has Voice of Valor, Voice of Fortitude, and Relentless March.