Has Gauges helped you a lot?

Not sure who to do before sending it.

I playing with jobs. Sometimes confused with rotations. Or I did so wrong.

When new gauges. I have a lot of learned rotations with Gauges.
Did you also helped with gauges?

Not really but they don't bother me either. It just another spot to look at

Astro gauge = Bigger card view and three new discard buttons. What was that about button bloat YoshiP?

Compared to the times of no gauge and can just click-off cards.

The intent of gauges was so you wouldn't have to pay much attention to your status bar, they succeeded with some jobs and failed with others, BRD still has buffs and procs they have to look at their status bar to track and the job gauge just added yet another thing to keep track of.

The gauges still need a lot of work. As a BLM it mostly just gives me two separate things to look at to keep track of buffs and procs, which is counter-productive for the stated purpose of changing focus away from hotbars/buff bars.

The BRD gauge makes things really busy now so it hasn't really helped. The WHM gauge I pretty much ignore, since I can tell if Divine Benison is available when it's lit up, and I don't care if I have lilies for other things since you can't use them strategically anyway due to losing them all when you use one ability that uses them.

The DRG gauge filling up for Nastrond is meh but I hate hate hate it when it falls of when avoiding mechs because some skills rely on it.

Didn't really help me. Actually it confused me more than anything because I was use to looking for stacks/ managing my class in a different place.

Bard - It just came with the updates to the songs. It looks cool though.

Paladin - Seems unnecessary due to the fact that only Sheltron and Intervention are looked behind it. But I don't mind it.

Warrior - I like it! Now we can use an ability that uses the gauge twice!

Dairk Neat Dark Knight - I like it too! It seems like a nice way to FORCE YOU TO USE BLOOD PRICE!! *SCREECHING*- - It's cool.

For SMN even on the smallest size it just gets in the way. Also with the way it is laid out it was easier to see the status and tickers in the old status bar which is in the same sight lines I use to keep track of DoTs. As far as I'm concerned it was an unneeded change to something that wasn't broken.

Of the classes I've leveled its only useful on RDM. WHM and AST are borderline useless. BLM and BRD make me have to bounce between my abilities, my procs, and my gauge.

I hope we get those simplified versions soon, I find them more distracting then anything :c

The AST gauge and the newly forced undraws are annoying. I preferred being able to click off my cards without needing to hit a specific button to do so.

Bard gauge... honestly, it's mostly just me, but I have to have the gauge a bit out of the way from how large it is (even with it sized smaller) to be able to see clearly. Unfortunately, that's led to me playing without songs sometimes. I'd have much rather liked a small sound effect for when songs are playing (like the sound put in place when your gauges are full/all procs gained). Or have a visual aura, like DRK's darkside, WAR's stance (before this was having 5 stacks of Abadon- don't know what it is now, haven't touched WAR yet since 4.0), MNK's greased lightning or BLM's astral fire/umbral ice. Something like the songbird emote (when you first activate that emote, you get music notes float around you for a little bit).

RDM definitely has the most useful gauge, but the job is pretty much built around that gauge.

WHM.... really the only time I even look at that gauge is to see if I have a lily to use Divine Benison. Otherwise, I pretty much ignore it.

The gauges look nice, but for healers or summoner, they led to more issues for me than help. I can't even count how many times I've wasted Aetherflow just cause I looked at the buff bar and didn't see it there. Besides, who in their right mind thinks that having to look at THREE spots that are ways aside from each other (the aetherflow bar) instead of one makes it easier?! It is far easier to discern between I, II and III than it is to discern between three "lights" that are distanced over few centimeters. Humans are hunters by nature and have very limited area of optical focus.

And I keep wasting cards as Astrologian cause the three "undraws" are pretty much identical. I don't use them often enough, so it's a pain to learn by muscle memory alone. It shouldn't be difficult to make it possible to "click" them off of the gauge at least...

It does help as a warrior though. Can't say I actually care about the gauge itself, but I like the new way of "paying" for the skills behind them, that lets me conserve more to use them in quick succession at the beginning of a battle or if things go south, or spend them as available to speed up progression in easier content.

Only one I find useful so far is MCH, but that's because it's hard built into the class now. The ones for SCH are downright tacked on and I hate the fact that my party can no longer see how many aetherflow stacks I have because they tied them to the one of our two gauges. It's caused more than a few tanks to erroneously think they have more wiggle room than my cooldowns actually allow and an endless supply of stress. Likewise I turned the faerie gauge off because I have yet to find a genuine use for it beyond "oh shit, my other healer is useless" moments and maybe two tank busting instances. It also doesn't help that it's a 70 skill when most of the instances where it'd currently be useful are in leveling dungeons with overzealous tanks with generally poor gear. Plus I have my faerie macro'd heavily so it's honestly a useless skill to me. I can heal much better with my current set up and have just as much up time for DPS in most situations as someone who relies on it.

Could some use refinement? Oh hell yes.

I like the concept of gauges which is to allow me to watch the onscreen action versus staring at multiple bars across the screen. I set mine pretty small and directly beneath my character so less need for the eyes to wander. Need each gauge to be revised to hold as much info as possible without becoming too big.

Best job wise for me so far?
Sam and Rdm

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Originally Posted by kikix12

It does help as a warrior though. Can't say I actually care about the gauge itself, but I like the new way of "paying" for the skills behind them, that lets me conserve more to use them in quick succession at the beginning of a battle or if things go south, or spend them as available to speed up progression in easier content.

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I don't think the gauge itself helped WAR since all they really did was double the number of stacks you'd have gotten in the old system. inner Beast, Fell Cleave, Steel Cyclone, and Decimate used to cost 5 stacks and now cost 50 gauge, they tacked on a 0 at the end and doubled your max count.

In no way am I saying this is a bad thing, but the gauge had nothing to do with it.

For most classes the gauge doesn't really add much to it. Exceptions being RDM and SAM since they were designed with the gauges in mind. To me it, like others have said, it's counterproductive to (at least one of) the reasons they supposedly added the gauges, to have less to look around at. BRDs have to look for their DoTs, Straight Shot buff, and keep track of the new gauge. AST's has caused it to increase button bloat cause hey, can't click off cards now. WHM, PLD, WAR gonna go with SMN and SCH as well, might as well not exist for all they "add" to the job. BLM can go either way really since all (to me) that it seems to do is track Astral Fire/Umbral Ice and the proc for Foul but I just more pay attention to when Foul lights up then the countdown to it. The MCH heat would probably be easier to track in gauge form than stacks but that's more personal tastes I think and the bullets, don't see why the needed an entirely separate gauge from the heat one, sure they could have made it aesthetically pleasing to have both tracked on the same icon. MNKs seemed to track just fine before since who wasn't clenching watching that timer during boss jumps before? NIN's are alright I guess?

long story short, gauges didn't help me, I feel they caused more hassle then they were worth and really wish I could have everything back to how it was in 3.X and keeping track of my (De)Buff bar instead of that and a gauge. If they help others, more power to you.

I generally find them annoying and distracting to be honest - they take up so much room on the screen I often find my eye being drawn to it meaning I miss an AoE telegraph or enemy attack. Really it seems nearly all Jobs don't even need it, in that the info shown on them could easily be covered by an existing icon and timer on the status bar, other than RDM, as JunseiKei mentioned, it seems the entire concept was designed specifically for RDM and then the development team realized "Oh bother, now we need to adapt this concept to every other Job otherwise it will overshadow them". It was basically a solution in search of a problem.

Of course the secondary reason for it's introduction was players didn't notice certain status icons were active (like PLD and oaths active or deactivated) and hence the gauge was meant to make that "more noticeable", but that was simply due to human tendency to desensitize visual clutter which they become used to and not because the icon wasn't noticeable enough. In fact, it made the problem worse, in that because it's so ostentatiously large, the mind is even more determined to ignore it, hence making the whole point of it backfire. It became more a hindrance than a help. Or at least, it's like that for me.

I'm sorry to Yoshi and the development team for this as I know they are trying to make things easier, but it was a change that I personally do not think was really necessary, and like many I would prefer an option to disable it completely on a Job by Job basis, and just have it's info on a small icon and timer on the status bar, as how the Job Gauge is at the moment is ultimately superfluous.

That's kind of why I said I don't particularly care about the gauge. Though in reality, unlike for Scholars/Summoners, the tanks gauges are actual gauges, and so they DO work to give information at a glance. And it is a bit easier to just glance at the gauge to know whether you can use two heavy-hitters or not than it would be with stacks. Not significant...but hey. At least it's not a detriment like for some other gauges.

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Originally Posted by Enkidoh

other than RDM, as JunseiKei mentioned, it seems the entire concept was designed specifically for RDM and then the development team realized "Oh bother, now we need to adapt this concept to every other Job otherwise it will overshadow them". It was basically a solution in search of a problem.

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This is exactly what I've been thinking for the entire job gauge system for the longest time. Most of the jobs I've played have no real need for it and as others have already said, it just gives me yet another spot I need to look at (and I was so accustomed to checking my own buff/debuff bar for job-specific things like AST's cards and SMN's time left on Dreadwyrm).

The whole thing really does feel like something they shoehorned into the rest of the jobs because a new job(s) was designed with a special gauge in mind and they needed to justify designing it that way.

I will concede though, I suppose it does give the devs some elbow-room to be creative with new jobs in the future...

Bard isn't that bad, it feels seamless once you get the muscle memory down. The buffs can be a hinderance, however it's easy to work around. Overall I like Bard's UI.

Ninja is great, absolutely no complaints about it.

PLD feels latched on, it doesn't really need a gauge.

Astro feels good too, the additional buttons are somewhat annoying, but they're so situational that is not a deal breaker.

White Mage feels latched on too, but not as bad as PLD.

Monk is even worse than PLD, imo. There's no reason for it.

Those are the only jobs I play at 60-70 :x

The only jobs I've found it at all helpful on are SAM and RDM. None of the others I play have enough going on to justify the presence of the extra visual clutter.

No. I miss my GL status and timer. Just more UI to ignore.. They really should make a toggle feature to revert back to what we had before.

Meh, all the healer gauges seem largely unnecessary.
WHM is only really necessary for Divine Benison with the rest of the bonuses being whatever
SCH is mildly less useless in keeping track of the fairy gauge but that's about it
AST is mind boggling useless and just created more button bloat for the job.

Tanks are so so
PLD is in the same boat as WHM
WAR has probably one of the better gauges as it actually has direct interactions with the flow and maintenance of the class and how it plays
No comment on DRK

Melee DPS are hit and miss
MNK, same problem as WHM and PLD
No comment on DRG
SAM gauge is fine
NIN gauge is alright ish. Huton Gauge was unnecessary but Ninki gauge is fine.

Support Gauge are alrightish
BRD could use some work but not overly cumbersome
MCH gauge is fine

Caster gauges are meh
No comment on BLM
SMN gauges have same issues as SCH
RDM gauge is fine

For the majority, they feel meh at best with the rare exceptions of RDM, SAM, and WAR for me so far honestly.

As a healer, the SCH Aetherflow one is so unnecessary. It's not like we're constantly looking towards the party list, and now our co-healers can't even see our stacks.

Fey Union makes a little more sense. It could have been a stacked icon, but I actually think it probably functions better as a meter.

I like them all. They look cool. Yeah once you get used to them, it does its job of being easier to track than little status bar icons which can get cluttered. For the cases where some jobs use both the gauge and status bar, they just need to move more information over to the gauge so that all the job stuff is in one place, easy to glance at. And yeah I like the new AST stuff with undraw buttons. As a controller user I wasn't clicking things off the status bar anyway, so I need buttons. Helps PS4 users who would need the extra step of writing macros if buttons aren't provided.

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Originally Posted by Kabzy

As a healer, the SCH Aetherflow one is so unnecessary. It's not like we're constantly looking towards the party list, and now our co-healers can't even see our stacks.

Fey Union makes a little more sense. It could have been a stacked icon, but I actually think it probably functions better as a meter.

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I do wish it was smaller though. That thing takes up a LOT of screen space.

After leveling all the jobs to 70 I'll say the gauges for the new jobs are fine, however for the old jobs I strongly dislike most of the gauges either for the visual clutter where the old buffs would've been fine or the negative mechanical changes likely made to justify the existence of the gauges.

Hopefully the minimalist versions will at least alleviate the visual clutter.

No just blocks part of my view and to me seems worthless. Don't think smn really needs one.

Monk gage is really useless. It's just given us a timer in a seperate place to our other timers.

I have stopped playing warrior due to how much I hate the gage over wrath stacks. It just makes it feel like you have to storms path for 100 years to fell cleave for 5 seconds.

PLD up to 60: I often forget the gauge exists.
WAR up to 50: I often forget the gauge exists.
DRK up to 54: what even is this gauge used for?

WHM up to 60: I often forget the gauge exists.
SCH/SMN up to 50: do I even get one at 50? Oh wait, aetherflow. Right. Now I remember.
AST up to 53: cool but could use some cooldown notification.

MNK up to 55: it's not like it tells me anything to change my skill usage.
DRG up to 50: do I even get one at 50?
NIN up to 50: cool, useful, glorified buff icon and timer but useful.
SAM up to 60: love it, feels natural.

BRD up to 52: lack important proc and dot indicators.
MCH up to 50: not much to say when I'm still at a "broken" job level.

BLM up to 60: useful but lack obvious proc indicators.
RDM up to 60: ugly and not much more useful than two mana buff icons on my buff list.

PS: I'm guessing most gauges become useful in the 60-70 stretch, that's why I listed the job levels I have.

I haven't played them all, but RDM and DRG's gauge are definitely helpful. DRG's makes watching Blood of the Dragon easier, and RDM is just...well, I can't imagine RDM without it. Works so well.

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Originally Posted by Tigerlilley

Monk gage is really useless. It's just given us a timer in a seperate place to our other timers.

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But it is the monk's most important timer, which you can now place seperate from the other timers in the size you want.

They are basically glorified buff timers for the jobs I play most (monk, dragoon) and I'll be toggling these back to the oldstyle as soon as I'm able. Although I can understand their use in other jobs like the tanks.

I don't know if it's the gauges, or the changes to class skills, but I can DEFINITELY play much better.

As a NIN before Stormblood, my damage was lacking. The change to Shadowfang helps me to focus more on other things instead of using Shadowfang and Dancing Edge separately. I like how I get the damage AND the slashing debuff at the same time, with ot without a WAR in party.

I dont see much difference are my aetherflows in gauge bar or buff bar personally.

SAM: helpful, nice and simple
RDM: essential; wish it showed procs too
MCH: essential and functional, but could just as easily go back to the buff status bar
BRD: okay, but BRD now has so many CDs to juggle that the song bar is yet another thing to monitor even if it's useful. I end up looking at that, my DoT timers, and my hotbar more than the fight sometimes.
BLM: not intuitive at all, but kind of helpful once you realise what each part of it is. Would rather track things on my buff bar though.
SMN: Eh. It's simple and not useless but again, would rather track it on my buff bar instead of having to glance at that huge "you have x stacks of y" indicator.
SCH: Aetherflow is whatever, prefer buff bar icons but I can live with the new UI if I have to. Fairy Gauge is crap and feels like an obstruction as a huge separate thing. Can it be made smaller and attached to the Aetherflow bar somehow if we have to keep it?
AST: didn't like it at first, can live with it now. Like the BLM gauge I didn't find it intuitive but it does it's job well enough. However, I will only truly be okay with it if I can see fellow AST's cards again. I hate not knowing what they have when I'm trying to decide what to do with what I draw.
WHM: Bleh. Utterly ignorable since DB lights up when you can use it and the CDR is basically invisible power even with the gauge. You either have abilities on CD or you don't, so while reducing the timer on certain big skills is nice, it's not something that needs an obtrusive UI.

Haven't played the rest enough to judge well but overall the gauges aren't really helping or hindering me. They're just different. Some classes needed them, others didn't, but they all got one anyway. I hope 4.1 takes the pain out of the worst offenders.

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Originally Posted by Cidel

it just gives me yet another spot I need to look at (and I was so accustomed to checking my own buff/debuff bar for job-specific things like

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Also, let us not forget that you still need to consult those same buff and debuff bars for content like savage raids, further making the job gauges a bit questionable. Pre- Stormblood, everything was in one nice spot.

I know my husband loves the gauges for MNK. He says it's less self buff clutter and lets you see what you actually need to see (buffs from others, debuffs from fights).

I agree, in general the gauges are "just another extra thing to monitor" and often do more harm than good. The reason for that is that they're mostly half-assed attempts without a clear purose.

Were they supposed to be HUDs to eliminate the need to focus on the buff bars? Then they're obvious failures because they don't show procs, so we still have to keep our eyes on the buff list anyway. If the new HUD cannot completely replace the buff/debuff list, then it fails as a HUD.

I hope the devs rethink these gauges and at least have a clear purpose for them. Don't let them be just another obstruction to the game, another distraction during combat, another annoyance.

I don't feel like it's a hindrance or anything. For me it feels the same as it used to be, instead it's larger visuals instead of tiny icons with numbers on most of them.
In some jobs like AST it definitely helps.
The new jobs were obviously made with the gauges in mind.

We went from most jobs starring at their buffs to starring at their buffs AND job bar.


......Good job?