Timer Mechanics on Jobs

BLM's AF/UB, Healer/BRD/SAM/BLM DOTs, WAR's surging tempest, and RPR's death's design.

MCH's Bioblaster also kinda falls under this now but it's limited to trash pulls, and BLU also has quite a few options but it's a limited job.

I'm not great at them, but I tend to enjoy Buffs, Debuffs, and DOTs that require the player to actively put an effort to keep maintained, so it's been pretty disappointing to see or hear that they've been getting removed over the years.

To list the ones off the top of my head:
Healers had their DOTs stripped down to just one in ShB. I believe MNK's greased lightning used to be a speed buff to maintain before its rework then too.
SMN and PLD lost their DOTs in EW.
MNK's DOT and buff, and NIN's buff timers were removed with DT.
And of course we just had VPR's ripped out with the recent patch.

I don't doubt there are folks who really dislike them, and I can't deny there weren't any that I was all right with their removal, but I feel they've gone overboard with it. Am I the only one who thinks this?

I can't speak for all of these jobs, but I can say that it took a bit of time to get back to Greased Lightning IV. And the MNK would lose it during a phase change for doing nothing wrong other than selecting being a MNK. Demolish (MNK DoT) always felt very lacking. I think the change they made in DT is pretty good. I'm still getting used to it though. But it boils down to using Demolish once for every two snap punch. So, it is essentially the same idea, just not a DoT.

I think BLM's fire/ice, BRD's dots (though they could be turned into a single dot tbh and it would be fine), SAM's dot, and healer dots are good tension and management. I actually would like BLM's thunder to be removed or turned into an ogcd, because it's in a terrible spot of the damage being basically pointless and it's a newb trap. Warrior's and DRK's are both enjoyable to me, but neither is particularly interesting; Warrior's just means your combo is 1 2 3 1 2 4 1 2 3, while DRK's is a check that you're using your MP regularly.

In general, to me, a dot should not just be a timer you have to maintain; it should either be part of a decision tree (like samurai's) or a way to keep up your damage even if something happens to your uptime (healer). Buff timers also should be in a spot where it isn't excruciating if something goes wrong but it's rewarding to manage them successfully; this is to me a lot of why EW BLM was a great class and at the root of many objections to DT BLM, that your ways to work around the BLM timers were nerfed so you more often just failed with nothing you can do about it.

I don't think Warrior's or Reaper's really do anything besides exist, but nor are they pain points while playing, so I'm pretty neutral on them. The ninja main I know was perfectly happy with the removal of the buff in DT because it also just existed rather than being something you have to play around.

I really wish they made it easy to tell how much damage a dot does, because my biggest problem with them is that the Actions & Traits menu doesn't make it clear how much damage they do overall, and I don't know offhand how they interact with my stats.

I think BLU's dot gameplay is substantially in response to the hot mess that is Moon Flute, which is a strong contender for worst designed skill in the game. The dots and Apokalypsis do a good job of making it feel satisfying to have correctly executed your Moon Flute window, but regardless spending 15 seconds unable to cast is profoundly unsatisfying. I like the feeling of dots taking out my enemies on BLU, but unfortunately the dot mage stuff makes it even less likely they'll ever do a Moon Flute rework.

I love my BLU Union Mandated 15 second break every 2 minutes, thank you very much.

Even more often if I'm on Breath of Magic workman's comp.

Seriously though, it's a lot more compelling than just "15 seconds unable to cast" because on many encounters you're forced to NOT use it or stagger its timing so you don't leave yourself defenseless for a moment that you have to heal or interrupt or shield or what have you. You can also use it more often than once every 2 minutes if it means meeting a burn phase head on or before a boss departs. It's a major part of why BLU manages to feel unique despite the fact that it basically has the same 2 minute cram-meta as every other job, and even plays differently depending on what loadout you're running if you're in an all BLU party. Were Moon Flute to just become a 2 minute cooldown, it would lose a lot of its challenge -- I feel BLU need not be streamlined the way other jobs "must" because you already can't play it for most of the game anyways; you're getting into something that's different and hopefully relishing in that.

Apparently DoT timers, buff/debuff timers, etc, are beyond the mental capacity of the FFXIV player.

That’s pretty much the message the devs have been sending. We literally do not have a single example of ‘traditional MMO support’ where you cast a buff or a debuff lol, it’s all instant cast oGCDs with 120-second cool downs that might as well have neither cooldowns nor timers for how entirely automated they are. They could make them literally auto-apply to the enemy at 120s and it wouldn’t change anything about how any job plays.

Apparently alienating an entire subsection of MMO players who enjoy traditional mmo support roles is entirely cool though. Doesn’t affect precious deeps , so the community won’t give a shit. And I mean playstyles like that might make their expert roulette take a whole 5 seconds longer! The gall , to suggest such a thing. And devs don’t give a shit because they can’t be bothered balancing anything outside of essentially automating it