Debuff mechanics - to situational.

One of the major issues I have with debuffs and why I don't think the way they work with the current game would support a debuff class such as Red Mage being added in the future is that SE currently pick and choose when your debuffs work in all fights of consequence such as primals and raids.

Most of the time if a debuff lands on a boss it's usually part of the fights mechanics. Such as Ifrit and stunning Eruption or ADS and silencing High Voltage. The rest of the time these effects are simply turned off, reducing your abilities to their base form of pure DPS.

I can understand it is probably easier to balance a fight by turning off these debuffs but I can't help but feel it cheapens these abilities if they only work when the developers decide they will, and takes away from what could be a much richer in flavor and dynamic combat system in boss fights.

I know it's probably a personal gripe but it always is disheartening, for me at least, to enter a boss fight and see my abilities lose half of their effectiveness simply because the fight hasn't been balanced to make use of them.

I believe this is because certain debuffs would be way more effective than others causing their associated classes to become more desired than others.

All debuffs in this game suffer from diminishing returns.

I.e. The more often you apply a debuff the shorter it's duration becomes, eventually the target becoming Immune to it for a short time before the cycle resetting.

And they have to limit the effect of debuffs on certain mobs otherwise you chain stun important mobs and trivialize mechanics.

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Originally Posted by Deusteele

All debuffs in this game suffer from diminishing returns.

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Not all. Resistance debuffs (Storm's Eye, Disembowel, Dragon Kick, and Foe Requiem if you want to include it) do not ever diminish.

This whole "Red Mage debuffer" rubbish from FFXI needs to be wiped from the annals of history, along with the rest of FFXI.

Do we speak of crowd control (stun, mezz/sleep, silence, root...) or do we speak of debuffs (-%dmg done, +%dmg received, +%cast time...)?

This is probably for the best actually. I'm quite certain that classes where the main focus is on debuffs (Or party-wide buffs) can't be balanced effectively in an MMO. For the most part debuffs tend to fall into one of two categories: Either they aren't considered very useful, or they're so vastly required you can't party without one. This works fine in an off-line game, where a boss being utterly crippled by a timely status effect doesn't ruin anything, or where going with a suboptimal party member won't get folks yelling at you.

As for the other question of why abilities seem to be "switched off" for certain fights... imagine if you COULD stun any attack. I bet you it wouldn't add more flavor and dynamic combat. It would simply result in the "required" party setup being one where you have enough stunners to stun every attack that's remotely a problem. The debuffs that are turned off, typically sleep, stun, silence, knockback, and bind, are disabled because they are easy solutions to problems the boss poses. The other debuffs, like slow, DoTs, Eye for an Eye, Virus, I don't think I've run into fights where these are disabled.

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

This is probably for the best actually. I'm quite certain that classes where the main focus is on debuffs (Or party-wide buffs) can't be balanced effectively in an MMO. For the most part debuffs tend to fall into one of two categories: Either they aren't considered very useful, or they're so vastly required you can't party without one. This works fine in an off-line game, where a boss being utterly crippled by a timely status effect doesn't ruin anything, or where going with a suboptimal party member won't get folks yelling at you.

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LotrO initially (SoA-times) has done a good job with that. They had a Loremaster to debuff enemies (pretty powerful) and Burglars to buff the group, pretty powerful too. Sure there where bosses hitting hard and therefore it was wiser to choose the Loremaster but it always could have been done with the burglar. In raids you typically had both of em.
Unfortunatley the community wanted tohave a mage and no Loremaster, they also wanted to have a thief and no burglar. And as time passed by Turbine changed em, sadly if you ask me.

The debuff mechanic used by the bard is good, it takes high resources (TP) but offers good use (-10% dmg dealt by hitted enemy). And it is rough, as time goes by, to keep the debuff up.

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Originally Posted by Gamemako

This whole "Red Mage debuffer" rubbish from FFXI needs to be wiped from the annals of history, along with the rest of FFXI.

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LEAVE MAH BST ALONES!! :mad::mad:

:p

(I fully agree on NIN blinktanks though!) ;)

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

The other debuffs, like slow, DoTs, Eye for an Eye, Virus, I don't think I've run into fights where these are disabled.

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Blind, Slow and Heavy are kind of wildcards. Garuda is susceptible to Slow (and I *think* Heavy) but Ifrit and Titan are completely immune. I'm not sure about Ifrit and Garuda on Blind, but I know that Titan can be.

The only attacks that suffer from diminishing returns or full on immunity are the major gamechangers that can be maintained constantly: Stun (via Shield Bash), Blind (via Flash and Ruin 2), Slow (Haymaker and Shadow Flare), Sleep, etc. Everything else is either incapable of being maintained constantly (like Eye for an Eye and Virus), thanks to CD, or comparatively minor effects, like the resistance debuffs and Rage of Halone's STR debuff. They don't *need* to suffer from DR in order to be balanced because of their comparatively low average effects over time (Virus and EfaE are amazing for burst mitigation though, which is likely what the devs want the big debuffs to be used for). The effects that would be able to be up all the time, without DR, would be horribly overpowered.

editing...

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Originally Posted by Feilina

LotrO initially (SoA-times) has done a good job with that. They had a Loremaster to debuff enemies (pretty powerful) and Burglars to buff the group, pretty powerful too. Sure there where bosses hitting hard and therefore it was wiser to choose the Loremaster but it always could have been done with the burglar. In raids you typically had both of em.
Unfortunatley the community wanted tohave a mage and no Loremaster, they also wanted to have a thief and no burglar. And as time passed by Turbine changed em, sadly if you ask me.

The debuff mechanic used by the bard is good, it takes high resources (TP) but offers good use (-10% dmg dealt by hitted enemy). And it is rough, as time goes by, to keep the debuff up.

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You mentioned them being powerful, and that's part of the problem. When support classes aren't useless, they often hit the other side: Being so powerful they're required. And that is just as much an issue as a support class being underpowered, because now instead of nobody wanting them, nobody wants anything else.

A comparison can be drawn to tank and healing classes, which is a fair comparison. However, there's already an issue with an overabundance of DPS compared to other classes (Let's face it, folks flock to DPS for reasons I'm not going to get into here). If support classes enter the game and become a requirement (Either due to player perception or due to the game being balanced around the assumption you have one), that's now going to be "one tank, one heal, one support, one DPS", further reducing the available slots for DPS. And I guarantee you the pool of folks playing support won't come entirely out of the DPS, so that's less people playing tanks and healers on top of it. It won't exactly ruin the game, but it's going to take an already existing issue and make it worse.

Fair points. I meant to make an example of a game which has done good with support classes.
The fact the we only have groups of four players kills the "pure support class" instantly. (LotrO had 6 per group)

Oh wow, I honestly didn't expect this to continue past my original post. But it's been nice to read some really good points from all sides of the argument.

I think with FFXIV having it so that pretty much all classes have access to some form of debilitating debuff be it a stun, or a slow, or heavy effect there isn't too much risk of classes be excluded.

I completely agree and understand it is much simpler to balance a fight with these things turned off, but for me that just feels like lazy combat mechanic development. Diminishing Returns were developed as an answer to fights being exploited by stun locking, and XIV even employs DR's in it's system.

I don't see any reason why abilities cannot be stunned or silenced occasionally, their use is limited / restricted by Diminishing Returns. Even if the DR is ramped up so you can only use a skill a couple of times per battle would be better than just plainly switched off.

It could provide more dynamic battle mechanics and provide more options in classic "Oh Shi.." moments. ie: your healer gets wiped out and you need to buy a few seconds to get them back up and in the game, you use could use a stun to hold off the next big attack. Or similarly the tank goes down and DPS is left with the mob, a heavy could be used to allow the DPS to kite the boss until the tank is restored.

Currently situations like this can mean the fight is sometimes over and you need to start again.

I know this is very much a personal opinion, and I'm certain the combat developers have their own difficulties and limiting factors. It's easy for me to say they should take more time to develop better fights that are balanced include the full range of players skills, debuffs and all when in reality their hands are tied.

I guess my main source of irritation with all of this and the reason I made the thread in the first place was just how blatantly obvious they telegraph a fights combat mechanics by doing this. Essentially if you find a working interrupt / debilitating debuff then it is meant as part of the fight mechanics because otherwise it would be turned off like the rest.

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Originally Posted by Urthdigger

editing...

You mentioned them being powerful, and that's part of the problem. When support classes aren't useless, they often hit the other side: Being so powerful they're required. And that is just as much an issue as a support class being underpowered, because now instead of nobody wanting them, nobody wants anything else.

A comparison can be drawn to tank and healing classes, which is a fair comparison. However, there's already an issue with an overabundance of DPS compared to other classes (Let's face it, folks flock to DPS for reasons I'm not going to get into here). If support classes enter the game and become a requirement (Either due to player perception or due to the game being balanced around the assumption you have one), that's now going to be "one tank, one heal, one support, one DPS", further reducing the available slots for DPS. And I guarantee you the pool of folks playing support won't come entirely out of the DPS, so that's less people playing tanks and healers on top of it. It won't exactly ruin the game, but it's going to take an already existing issue and make it worse.

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I think you're correct, playing around with that is an issue. However the Class/Job system does give one an easy out. If the "support" jobs are offshoots of the "DPS" classes then nothing really gets changed Population wise. Especially if the "Support job" is designed to work well with it's "Damage" counterpart. Plus, it's just an algorithm for Duty finder, you could prioritize 1 DPS/ 1 Support, but in the event that either is unavailable, it could jump to 2 DPS or 2 support fairly easily. I'm fairly certain that there is some hidden priority in the DF right now.

I mean, I don't see anyone turning Bards down for groups and they're pretty close to a support class.

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Originally Posted by Tzain

I mean, I don't see anyone turning Bards down for groups and they're pretty close to a support class.

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Support is a temporary secondary functionality that a job/class brings and is forced to reduce its effectiveness at its primary role when it opts to activate that support. BRD and SCH are the two nominal "support" classes: BRD can drop its damage by 20% to increase resource regeneration for the group. When it's not active, they are a fully effective DPS. SCH can reduce its healing capability by swapping Eos (who has the AoE heal, the +mdef buff, and the huge +healing buff) for Selene (who gets a silence and 2 speed buffs). When you have Eos, you're a fully optimized healer; when you have Selene, you're a less effective healer, but you increase the performance of the rest of the group (not by much though; the buffs increase skill/spell speed which has a terrible rate of return; my SCH goes from a 2.41 GCD to a 2.28 GCD, which is slightly more than a 5% increase in cast speed).

Basically, the "support" classes have the *option* to activate their support at the cost of their primary role. I expect any further "support" classes to follow the same model, mainly because it allows them to fit within the trinity design model while still maintaining a decent balance when they put up their support (because you balance the support capability against the group composition/benefit).

Or they can just have flat out lower dps than the rest and always be supporting with skills that are always useful regardless of party composition.

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Originally Posted by Gardes

Or they can just have flat out lower dps than the rest and always be supporting with skills that are always useful regardless of party composition.

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No. They cant. Because this game has 4-player parties for a large portion of gameplay, and these parties MUST be able to meet dps checks with 2 Bards, since the DF only recognizes 3 roles and double Bard groups happen.
If a Bard had lower dps but raised other players' dps enough to make up for it (allowing a 4-player party to meet dps checks), then that Bard mechanic that increased 1-3 players' dps to compensate would be at least twice as effective in an 8-player setting (3 times as effective if it only or mainly affected dps classes), making the class either underpowered in 4-player parties or OP in 8-player parties.

As it stands now, BRDs have to give up 20% dps to use their temporary "support" function of TP/MP regen. This necessitates them being near or equal to other DD classes in terms of dps when they are not running these songs to meet dps checks, but allows them to serve a temporary support role without being OP. The only other support they have is Requiem, which is comparable in power to abilities other classes have like Disembowel, Dragon Kick, Storm's Eye, etc, which increase a mob's damage taken by multiple players without getting those classes labeled "support". They also have the added utility of a silence, but other classes get that as well. They dont get a true stun, or sleep like a BLM, or insta-res like a SMN, etc etc. This is not FFXI, or EQ, or any other game where bards are primarily support. They are, and must be, primarily dps in the current system FFXIV uses. For reasons I touched on earlier.

Just make the boost effect weaker when in full parties.

Well the boosts could be different deppending on party size, but they could also be single target like a personalized song a bard cold use to bood one persons dps - wouldn't matter how many people there are. Might even be interesting if you go and switch from person to person in different situations.

That's with the bard example but a new class/job could be as such, buffing a person at a time, or having like three buffs that can be kept active, all 3 on a single person or spread out - wouldn't matter if the group is 4 or 8. Ofc the buffs wouldn't be self-castable.

So they could have flat out lower dps (lets say like paladins - they still do some of it but it's not really enough by itself) if the buffs on other people make up for it.