Solo Duties: Difficulty vs. Class

Hello All

As you maybe know (can't recall if I already said or not), I have created an alt. She is a bard and she just vanquished Lahabrea on first try. :cool:

The experience to create an alt, although the game is not friendly for that option (up to tedious), is very positive for me and makes me enjoy the game a lot more.

Main reason: I'm no more a beginner and it makes an enormous difference. I know how things work and that makes everything easier. I progress trouble free, getting rid of solo duties on first try and fully enjoying that it goes smoothly and rapidly forward.

But there is a second reason that turns everything into easy mode to me: The bard class has two major advantages: I can cast while moving and I can efficiently autoheal/protect myself. When I compare to summoner, who's slightest movement interrupt skills and who has only one ridiculous self heal skill... I find that very unfair.

And that's my question: Globally, was it never discussed to balance capacities between classes? Or is it intentional that some classes are harder to play than others?

Originally, jobs were pretty unique, with some harder than others.

Over time, they have made everything not only easier, but more "balanced". This balance comes at a cost, which is that the jobs feel more and more the same, to the point that there are players frustrated over classes being just an aesthetic choice.

For example, although Bard has a heal called Second Chance, so does Dancer, Machinist and all melee DPS. In addition, melee DPS have Bloodbath (which heals them for whatever damage they deal). Some of them even have another heal of their own (such as Dancer, Monk and Dragoon). Tanks have too many self-heals by level 100 and obviously healers are made of them.

So where does that leave casters? Red Mage has its own cure spell (Vercure) it can spam. Summoner gets a powerful heal, I think around level 70 or 80, via Phoenix, and has a shield ability from the first few levels. Black Mage and Pictomancer have an extremely powerful shield to absorb big hits, but no heals.

So casters do lose out quite a lot. They also have the least HP and can take more damage from certain types of attacks (physical), so it's not really fair. They are meant to stay ranged and use the shield if they plan to get hit on purpose. Jobs used to be harder so this was part of their design. Over time, they make everything easier so this is probably something they'll change at some point, given everything else has.

Casters used to struggle to move at all, particularly Black Mage and Summoner. For example, you've mentioned how Summoner has to cast, but it doesn't actually need to cast much at all anymore. It only casts a lot at low levels (such as before Summoner is unlocked), because the summon spells increasingly are instant cast. By the high levels you will find that only a few summon spells, that are used extremely rarely, have casts, and you can choose to use the summons in a different order to account for this. For example, it's better to use Titan or Garuda before Ifrit if you need mobility. Red Mage casts every-other cast but even this has been eroded at level 100 with some full sequences of no casts. Pictomancer has long periods it can choose to use with no casts if needed, and Black Mage has many instant casts along with Triple Cast and Swiftcast.

I mentioned that they made things easier over time. Examples of this include the erosion of actual cast times. There was a time when they attempted to give Bard and Machinist cast times, and everyone stopped playing them for the entirety of Heavensward. You used to have only 3 seconds to continue a combo, but now you have 30. You used to be punished with something as crazy as a 50% damage loss if you didn't press your attacks in the right order or at the right time, but now it's more like a 1-5% damage loss, or even less than that, and a lot of things now highlight yellow when you are supposed to press it. Being resurrected made you take a (I think 25%) hit not only to substats like it currently does, but also to main stats and it was double that if you died twice. Substats are nothing compared to main stats because that reduces your HP and majority of your damage in a big way.

So in summary, "balance" has been their direction for a very long time now, but at a certain point balance results in everything being the same and only a visual/aesthetic choice, and players have become unhappy about this over time, so they may actually backtrack on it somewhat. It's hard to really say, but so far, they have continued in the direction of balance ever more.

Thank you very much for your answer.

I play only summoner and bard. I'm lucky that I selected two jobs that are - to my eyes - completely different. I enjoy both equally, but bard is - by far - easier than summoner.

When you think that, although I'm an average player slow on keyboard, my bard completed smoothly and fast the msq up to - and with - Lahabrea entirely solo, with everything done on first try (no easy mode ever)... We are very far from the struggle it was with my summoner and it shows without ambiguity how easy it is to play bard. Don't misunderstand me: personally, I enjoy a lot playing bard, because I'm often tired and really appreciate having it easier on those days. But I find it unfair toward my summoner. :o

Re Ifrit, you're right: I very rarely use it due to its long casting time. In high level dungeons and trials, requiring us to move nearly all the time, there is no point and at the top of it, it puts unnecessary stress on the healers of the team.

On my opinion, summoner would deserve a bit more self-healing option. Physics is a joke and I try to maintain aegis up all the time, but well, it's not "much".

After level 50(some would say before, but after for sure) there is no real reason to have Physic on your cast bar. At those levels the heal will essentially never be worth the effort it took to cast it. Getting in an extra ruin/damage spell and ending the fight slightly faster is always the right answer. Now as Jeeq pointed out, the Pheonix summon does have a decent heal attached to it. So summoner isnt without option, its just not an always available option.

Getting back to balance, there are 2 things to consider. While some classes may be harder to play then others, some people more naturally mesh with certain playstyles over others. Solo encounters are balanced such that any class is able to beat them. This balance is achieved via stat meddling(maybe the boss has less health when you play on a healer class that has low damage for instance) and via a buff that you automatically get at the start of the fight. I play all combat encounters on Black Mage the first time(one of the harder jobs by most accounts), and the buff i have in those solo fights increases my regen to the point that im only in danger if im failing to dodge or if im not reading the mechanics right. I would imagine its the same on Summoner. For a healer that same buff might increase their damage done instead cause they have plenty of heal options. Knowing my regen will take care of auto attacks, i dont run around needlessly trying to dodge them. Instead i cast continuously, only moving for mechanics. More casts is more damage, which ends the fight faster, which means im less likely to get in trouble from damage piling up. But all of that is playstyle, not balance. I mesh fairly well with the mentality, so it works for me. In contrast, if im on dancer i mostly stand still while attacking - even though dancer has the bards full ability to attack while on the move all the time(if im in a good spot why move? if im not, i get to a good spot and stay there). So that playstyle isnt a perfect fit for me(i can manage, but i know im not getting everything its capable of). It is possible that the bard/dancer style is a better fit for you. Still other people might fit better with the "i can heal myself through any screwup i might make" style, or the "im very hard to kill" style. Finding the right fit for yourself can make a world of difference.

Hello Frizze! You gave me to think. You're certainly right. Play style is a major factor. Personally, I play only ranged class (I get motion sickness at melee). I'm a lot older than most of you with one main consequence: I'm slow. So, if I have to move, I move, but I prefer when I can stand and focus on managing my skills properly.

All in all, bard is "comfortable" to me and that's certainly because it does match better my way to play. I enjoy summoner more than bard, but it's harder to play. In the end, it's a win/win in my case to have a main (summoner) and an alt (bard). On days I'm tired, I stick to bard, and when I feel better, I'm on my main (summoner).

More complicated jobs would be impossible for me (black mage, ...). As for healers, to have the responsibility to maintain the team alive is terrifying me! No way... LOL

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Originally Posted by LuSnow

Hello Frizze! You gave me to think. You're certainly right. Play style is a major factor. Personally, I play only ranged class (I get motion sickness at melee). I'm a lot older than most of you with one main consequence: I'm slow. So, if I have to move, I move, but I prefer when I can stand and focus on managing my skills properly.

All in all, bard is "comfortable" to me and that's certainly because it does match better my way to play. I enjoy summoner more than bard, but it's harder to play. In the end, it's a win/win in my case to have a main (summoner) and an alt (bard). On days I'm tired, I stick to bard, and when I feel better, I'm on my main (summoner).

More complicated jobs would be impossible for me (black mage, ...). As for healers, to have the responsibility to maintain the team alive is terrifying me! No way... LOL

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I felt the same way about playing Healer. Have been playing FFXIV since 2021 but I avoided trying/playing healer (for the same reasons as you) until earlier this year when friends encouraged me to bite the proverbial bullet and give it a try. And to be fair I still find healing in dungeons challenging but levelling the jobs alongside supportive friends certainly helped.
And I'd have to say, Sage has become one of my favorite jobs.

Currently learning Tank jobs - another role I'd avoided until recently!

In the beginning i only leveled BLM. And arcanist and archer, because they had cross-class skills that i needed/wanted on BLM(i also started with just a few crafter/gatherer classes, but this spread to all of them within like 6 months). And then conjurer for the unicorn mount. And then DRK because i heard the quests were good and i wanted the panther mount. Added Blue cause it looked fun, but it was never serious. This held for years, then in ShB i added dancer and actually finished leveling white mage so i could do the role quests. Add reaper in EW for the additional role. Then at some point in the second half of the EW cycle, i decided i wanted the amaro. So that became EVERY class. Which i was able to finish earlier this year. But most of those jobs i leveled solo and via tribal quests/WT books, etc. I would only que with a job if i was confident i was playing it well enough. Some groups saw my RDM, but no one saw my astro etc.

So why do i bring all this up? During one of the early mogtome events(shb timeframe if i remember right) i was showing off my WHM glam to a friend. At this point i had never healed in live content. When me and the friend were done talking, i went to que into Orbonne Monastery to farm some tomes. Que took a couple mins, im not paying attention. It pops, i go in. As the instance is loading, i realize im still on WHM and now there are 24 people counting on me(and 5 other guys) to know how to heal, some of them who had never been there before. In a raid with a ton of mechanics that was only partly nerfed at that point. I explained to the group and offered to drop while the cutscenes played and we did the first trash pull. No one said anything, so i stayed. Knowing the raid clearly helped a lot, but for someone who had never healed before the run was fairly smooth. The group had the normal number of deaths(if youve done orbonne you can probly guess where and when most of them were), resses were fairly quick, i was able to contribute damage while still getting the heals done, and all in all i cant say there were really any complaints. So while ive since gone back to not healing as a rule(i will for friends, but i do make it clear that im better in a different role), it really wasnt as scary or hard as i thought it would be.