Dawntrail could live to be an amazing expansion with one single huge flaw?

I've been thinking. The story arc can be great. The expansion can have more interesting encounters (which they're allegedly doing?), and the content features could be plentiful and fulfilling. Relic done properly again.

Even if all of those end up being true, as optimistic as it sounds, DT will be forever haunted by being the worst expansion for job design because it doubles down on the already bad EW design. I don't think anybody needs to actually play them tomorrow to guess this by now.

And not just for healers, the worst cases, but for DPSers too. I've been reading the job guides and what everybody ends up getting? Mostly an extra "follow up key press" that just do plain damage with AoE falloff.

If you're not into Pictomancer or Viper, there's literally nothing of relevance to look forward with most jobs, in face some like BLM are even dreading upon the changes chopping down gameplay diversity.

It's gonna suck to wait until what, late 2026? With this job design - assuming they'll really do somthing of substance then.

it's only a flaw if you are one of the few who aren't liking the direction SE is going in with the jobs.

DT doesn't really have a great big plot hook to draw you in, and the new stuff Jobs are getting seem quite underwhelming at best.

Literally the only thing the expansion has to stand on will be it's story.

For now the story hype kinda holds the fort for me, although it's more willingness to play through an expansion msq again more than actual hype like for EW.

But once that will be done? I dread this expansion. It's gonna be so miserable on job enjoyment... Will pvp be able to keep me sane for years to come? idk.

Content wise it will be hard to beat Stormblood.
Lore wise (and writing!) it will be hard to beat Shadowbringers.
It doubles down on Endwalkers job design.

Yeah, no. I'm keeping my expectations for Yawntrail in check.

I think your opinion is valid. Square-Enix has decided to go in a direction that tries to keep most jobs simple and well-tuned. I'm personally, pretty hyped with the changes I see. Tbh, sometimes it's okay not to "fix it if it isn't broken". The biggest changes seem to be for healers, and I'm actually pretty happy with the slight increase in complexity that I see for the jobs.

Edit: FFXIV for me is a very story-based game, and I'm looking forward to seeing what comes next. Plus, I think it's fun to see what new end game content SE might be thinking of adding next. I'm pretty happy with Variant Dungeons and would love to see more stuff like that that breaks the mold of other FFXIV content.

It's already a bad expansion in my book. No amount of Soken or story could save it, for the sole reason that gameplay is trash. A game without gameplay might as well not exist...

Personally I don't care too much for the story going forward. Endwalker I waited 10 years for, it was an alright conclusion. Venat was wonderful.

Going forward? They lost me the moment it became apparent we're very likely have the same cast. I just can't with the plot-armored Scions anymore. Ugh.

Range Tax will still most likely be a thing, so with that in mind, I can predict that the first savage tier will begin with what's already been an issue since they made Range Tax a thing: Strict meta parties in order to clear.
I hope there aren't any RDM mains who were wanting to clear within the first 4 weeks of Savage.

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Originally Posted by aquarys

The biggest changes seem to be for healers

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White Mage: Your party mitigation gets a party mitigation followup. Every 2 minutes you get to hit 3 three times instead of continuing to hit 1.
Scholar: 20 second heal spam mode every 3 minutes. You get another dot every 2 minutes.
Sage: 20 second heal spam mode every 3 minutes. You get an AoE dot, which would've been amazing except contrary to media tour it can not stack with the other dot making it trash/double boss use only. You get an oGCD nuke once a minute.

Only Astrologian is really getting anything that could be called real changes.