Evolved mode has zero failure states

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Originally Posted by Valence

People often forget it but Dota 2 has an AI mode.
It won't provide the same kind of challenge or chaos than true humans, but it will provide enough rng to still engage with most of the system.
I've played against bots in that game and the characters and the battle system was as engaging as vs humans, minus the difficulty/challenge ofc.

It's never been a problem of fighting against humans or AIs.
It's been about encounters scripted to the core with zero variable beyond damage and healing.

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The AI mode is a joke for anyone competent at the game, but I get where you're coming from. I have no issue with more randomness and variety in encounters. Whatever they do with encounters is irrelevant to my point anyway, which is that the jobs need depth as well. 8.0 could have the best MMO encounter design ever conceived and it still wouldn't make up for the jobs being mindless and boring.

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Originally Posted by Starrya

I have added superscript to the stuff that is basically the same. What we are left with for evolved BRD is pressing an oGCD before thrum and casting thrum. What we are missing is party coordination, DoT management, oGCD management, and prok management. I'll assume that party coordination of buffs is being made up for by improved encounter design. I'll also assume that the changed encounter design makes it so that casting thrum is a considerably higher commitment than it would be now. Using Hawk's eye correctly once per minute isn't as hard as managing both sidewinder and empyreal arrow, and either prok or DoT management is simply lost. Even with the most generous assumptions I can give, BRD is down by about two pieces of job difficulty that are simply not made up for anywhere, and for each assumption that doesn't pan out, they are down an additional one, up to four.

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Right. I just don't think the answer is walking directly backward. I would rather them do something different with the songs than just say, bring back DoT and proc management as we know it today. Maybe its a hot take, but DoTs are not unique per job or mechanically interesting. Party play may be gone, but it's gone for all jobs across the board, so how is it a BRD rotational failure for the purposes of this discussion? I'm not sure I consider that a unique rotational failure in general even though it is tied to rotational error. I think even before we get to encounters, thinking about the average player or a new player, some reduction in friction with respect to procs/DoTs might actually make sense if someone does somehow struggle with the new decision making here. The passive timers and resource management feeling samey across jobs is a concern for me. I'm neither here nor there with something like Sidewinder, or weaving in general, until I see the encounter design and actually get to test the job out. I can see how this would be a concern for someone who is into current optimization and I guess all I can say is, Reborn mode will still be there and I highly doubt it will do significantly less damage, but who knows. Idk, I'm more concerned about the jobs feeling homogenous to play than mourning micro losses or redundant elements like DoTs.

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Originally Posted by Turtledeluxe

I'm more concerned about the jobs feeling homogenous to play than mourning micro losses or redundant elements like DoTs.

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If using the correct songs at the correct time is valuable to do most of the time, that will be a great start. If you use a song you should have waited on, it will not be available when it is useful, and that will be akin to a rotational error, even if it doesn't impact damage directly. The more I look at what we have, the more I suspect that they will probably tier how important stuff like that is by difficulty. It won't matter in normal, but by ultimate, virtually every song will need to be used in the correct order at the correct time. Similarly, I expect that even though the 2 min buff window will be gone, we will start to see more mid-fight dps checks in higher difficulties. We will be free of the 2 min yolk, but in higher difficulties, those checks will still expect players to coordinate holding onto some of their higher damage options in order to burst through a short dps check.

That will likely make normal and old content even less engaging because jobs won't have a fidget spinner to optimize even if there is not much else to do, but it could easily be quite complex at higher difficulties, especially if each job has its own thing that is good in different ways on parts of the fight. If that kind of stuff all happens, and I hope it does, then we'll still be in a pretty good place overall. If that is the price we pay for a jumping pad to truly better battle content moving forward, then so be it. That said, while I personally like BRD's DoT in particular for its higher ceiling, it's not really about losing the DoT. It's about not seeing anything that replaces its removal in the job kit. The nightmare is that the jobs lose more stuff, feel more homogeneous, and aren't surrounded by well-crafted fights designed to put the changes to evolved jobs in the limelight. We obviously don't have all the information yet, but it is reasonable to be concerned that the two parts of it that we can see both appear to be headed in the nightmare direction.

Maybe I'm understanding wrong here but I'm not seeing how playing songs in "whatever order" is what's going on. In lower level content maybe but they do that rn anyways. Barrier is before a raidwide, regen is for a healcheck, yeah? It also seems they get AoEs or single-target DoT depending on what song they use, so order will affect DPS. WHM "spam heals" for dmg bonus is basically what burning lilies for blood lily is. It's just a matter of active vs passive charging. A crap healer will probably burn their MP trying to get an unnecessary burst and won't be able to raise when needed. Skill expression does seem to be leaning more into roles rather than jobs, though.

Evolved seems to follow the philosophy of the new Blm in that regards.

Jobs with low to none friction meant to be consumed, not mastered.

I hope the feedback that people are posting is heard and the jobs are improved before release because having jobs with even less meat in them than Shb-DT era jobs is the opposite of what the game needs

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Originally Posted by Turtledeluxe

Right. I just don't think the answer is walking directly backward. I would rather them do something different with the songs than just say, bring back DoT and proc management as we know it today. Maybe its a hot take, but DoTs are not unique per job or mechanically interesting. Party play may be gone, but it's gone for all jobs across the board, so how is it a BRD rotational failure for the purposes of this discussion? I'm not sure I consider that a unique rotational failure in general even though it is tied to rotational error. I think even before we get to encounters, thinking about the average player or a new player, some reduction in friction with respect to procs/DoTs might actually make sense if someone does somehow struggle with the new decision making here. The passive timers and resource management feeling samey across jobs is a concern for me. I'm neither here nor there with something like Sidewinder, or weaving in general, until I see the encounter design and actually get to test the job out. I can see how this would be a concern for someone who is into current optimization and I guess all I can say is, Reborn mode will still be there and I highly doubt it will do significantly less damage, but who knows. Idk, I'm more concerned about the jobs feeling homogenous to play than mourning micro losses or redundant elements like DoTs.

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You asked for rotational failures or mistakes on current BRD.

DoT management has been mentioned. Personally not a gigantic fan of timer upkeep but I'm not gonna deny that it's definitely a core rotational failure that's been in many jobs since reborn—just see the BLM uproar when they removed the timers, same for MNK. Same for combos breaking.

Otherwise all the proc management, preventing overcap, is gone in evolved.
All the priority system of the burst, is gone in evolved (no more proc and gauge rng).

What has evolved brought in terms of rotational pitfalls that reborn doesn't have?

And before I get accused of being a reborn nostalgic, no, I hate ShB+ reborn.

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Originally Posted by KihyiFelhede

Maybe I'm understanding wrong here but I'm not seeing how playing songs in "whatever order" is what's going on. In lower level content maybe but they do that rn anyways. Barrier is before a raidwide, regen is for a healcheck, yeah? It also seems they get AoEs or single-target DoT depending on what song they use, so order will affect DPS.

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You adjust your Summon order each minute based on when you need to move in the fight's mechanics, such that you're using Ifrit's long cast times during a time when you can stand still. You get AOEs (Titan followup, Slipstream) or single target (the rest of the Rites) depending on what Summon you use, too. Order doesn't affect DPS aside from 'you had to move during your Ifrit phase so you couldn't get the casts out, this negatively affects your DPS', on a dummy, there's no difference depending on order because you're using all three per minute anyway. It won't matter if you use Wanderer's, Mage's, Army's, or Army's, Mage's, Wanderer's, as you're using one of each, each minute, to build up to Radiant Finale (the 'Bahamut/Phoenix' of the rotation, it seems, the 'the loop resets here' moment in the 60s loop). The only way it'll affect your damage, is if you can double up on Songs within a 1min loop, but in the demo they showed, using Wanderer's took it off their bars entirely, so you might not even be able to play a Song a second time before using Radiant to refresh them all (in the same way that you can't double-Summon without using Bahamut/Phoenix to refresh them)

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Originally Posted by KihyiFelhede

Skill expression does seem to be leaning more into roles rather than jobs, though.

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I guess with the ILVL Projection thing, if I'm a SGE with the SGE Savage weapon, I can swap to SCH and benefit from having the exact same gear, and my weapon on SCH would be the same ILVL as the SGE weapon, just without the melds. So, yeh, if they want us to be more open to the idea of swapping Jobs in a Role, I guess it'd 'work', but it'd suck for those of us who really like one specific Job (or really dislike one specific Job) based on elements that aren't performance-related. Elements like Aesthetics, or Lore, or certain aspects of the Gameplay itself. Like, I have a friend really enjoys SCH, even cleared Ultimates with it, but now outright refuses to play SCH after getting it to level 100, in any level 100 content, because Seraphism is such a bastardization of the SCH Identity in her eyes (in terms of its VFX). I also like SCH, the Lore, the idea of the Gameplay of controlling yourself and your Faerie (EG positioning her to better reach players you yourself cannot, though SE's been hellbent for years on removing that element of Gameplay), and I absolutely hate Seraphism's VFX too, but I put up with it. Hopefully, we get a Character Action Skin for it, so we never have to look at the stupid white robe again if we so choose (and others who like the white robe can keep it, so everybody wins)

Trying to get players to be 'more open to the idea of swapping Jobs within a Role' is not going to work, if said player's reason for refusing to play a Job in the Role is subjective. More likely, it'll Galvanize players (haha SCH joke) to either stick to the Job they like, and complain that 'SE is making it harder for us <Job> enjoyers for no reason' or 'SE HATES <Job>', or worse, the player decides 'I'd rather just not do this level of content, than be forced to play a Job I don't want to play'

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Originally Posted by Valence

You asked for rotational failures or mistakes on current BRD.

DoT management has been mentioned. Personally not a gigantic fan of timer upkeep but I'm not gonna deny that it's definitely a core rotational failure that's been in many jobs since reborn—just see the BLM uproar when they removed the timers, same for MNK. Same for combos breaking.

Otherwise all the proc management, preventing overcap, is gone in evolved.
All the priority system of the burst, is gone in evolved (no more proc and gauge rng).

What has evolved brought in terms of rotational pitfalls that reborn doesn't have?

And before I get accused of being a reborn nostalgic, no, I hate ShB+ reborn.

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I asked how for example do you make songs more punishing than they are in Evolved because of the fact its the same, its in the post. So if not overcapping then what.

I think DoTs and procs being gone, some buttons being gone that will reduce the overall optimization like Sidewinder, are obvious but don't really make the job more fun. Putting this "back in" just goes back to Reborn mode. That's the point, while Evolved mode may be leaner overall, fail states and skill expression are not "zero".

And yes, you do have make assumptions about encounter design to be a little more forgiving about the changes. Overall, I agree that leaning too much on encounters is a slippery slope, but it higly depends on them following up on their claims of being unchained. What does that look like. If Evolved jobs are "good enough" for one xpac worth of whatever this battle design is, well they will inevitably grow over time and possibly allow for things like procs to come back, new ways to optimize, etc. To be abundantly clear in this way, I want to see more choice driven rotation over time, more encounter variables, not just another DPS button like Sidewinder. I can see how the latter might be someone's preference, I want them go all in on Evolved.

Regarding BLM, it did not lose buttons, it lost fuctionality. I feel like the only way is up honestly. All that's left in DT direction is giving it the EvolvedWHM treatment and dropping transpose. Force you to drop leyline before burst. Lol. I really hope they just do something all new.

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Originally Posted by KihyiFelhede

Maybe I'm understanding wrong here but I'm not seeing how playing songs in "whatever order" is what's going on. In lower level content maybe but they do that rn anyways. Barrier is before a raidwide, regen is for a healcheck, yeah? It also seems they get AoEs or single-target DoT depending on what song they use, so order will affect DPS. WHM "spam heals" for dmg bonus is basically what burning lilies for blood lily is. It's just a matter of active vs passive charging. A crap healer will probably burn their MP trying to get an unnecessary burst and won't be able to raise when needed. Skill expression does seem to be leaning more into roles rather than jobs, though.

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I think you might be looking for some context on why people think order might not matter. Currently, there are jobs that have barriers and heals in their role that other jobs in their role don't. PCT is a good example, with a heal on Star Prism, and a party-wide barrier in Tempera Grassa. When you swap from that to BLM which has neither of those things...Nothing changes. Healers aren't considerably more taxed, damage isn't considerably more scary, and it's mostly just convenient to have if someone who was supposed to mit something is dead. The impact that these heals and barriers would have to have to be more than nice-to-have would have to significantly increase. As it stands, the most impactful thing BRD songs are going to do is make somebody run into a death wall or an AoE by randomly causing them to move faster when they aren't expecting it. I hope that's not how it turns out, but it is how it has been historically.

Also, BRD already has a song that's better for AoE. Mage's Ballad reduces the cool down of your Rain of Death oGCD, which makes it the best for AoE damage. It just doesn't feel like anything has been added to the job to make up for all the stuff that's going to be gone.

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Originally Posted by Starrya

Also, BRD already has a song that's better for AoE. Mage's Ballad reduces the cool down of your Rain of Death oGCD, which makes it the best for AoE damage. It just doesn't feel like anything has been added to the job to make up for all the stuff that's going to be gone.

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Yeah that's kinda what I'm going for here, it doesn't seem much has changed. Right now its Wanderer 42 > Mage 42 > Paeon 33 to maximize procs but outside of savage you currently can just hit whatever and wait for it to time out with little to no penalty. I fail to see how this is meaningfully removing skill expression when it's just the current way things are. At worst it's just tweaking the current system.