My suggestion for how to fix the current "Synergy Stacking" meta.

I've been mulling the idea over for a while, and haven't been able to find any downsides.

Check it out. A serious idea to fix it all.

- Levels 60 and 70 unlock additional Cross Role ability slots, bringing the total number of slots to 7.

- Remove Battle Litany, Trick Attack, Brotherhood, Dragon Sight, Devotion, Embolden, Hyper Charge, Foe's Requiem from their respective Jobs. Remove Piercing/Slashing/Blunt resistance down.

- Put all of the above Abilities into Cross Role actions for their respective roles. Re-tool abilities and names (like they did with the current cross roles coming from 2.x/3.x).

- Melee are given Battle Litany, Trick Attack, Brotherhood, Dragon Sight, Piercing Debuff. Can only take (1) of the above.
- Ranged are given Hypercharge, Foe's Requiem, Slashing Debuff. Can only take (1) of the above.
- Magical Ranged are given Embolden and Devotion, Blunt Debuff. Can only take (1) of the above.

That's my solution.

And just for fun- I had even more interesting ideas. Each Job's "Affinity" for a Cross Role gives them extra effects (incentive to take on specific Jobs) when used.

- DRG has "Affinity" to Battle Litany and Dragon Sight. DRG is given a personal Direct Hit percentage increase when using Battle Litany, and boosts personal damage by 5% more when using Dragon Sight.
- NIN has "Affinity" to Trick Attack. When used, "Haste" effect applied to self. Haste speeds up ONLY the rate of auto-attacks for the duration of Trick Attack.
- MNK has "Affinity" to Brotherhood. When used, Meditative Brotherhood granted (current implementation).

Etc etc. The idea is to keep the skill feeling unique for those who gave it to Cross Role, but also, to have flexibility within party-makeup. The party loses nothing for bringing any specific Job, but the specific Job gains something for bringing specific Cross Role.

I fear everyone will just take the better one.

Making a new meta changes nothing people will get on that train leaving any classes that fall out of that meta behind. There's no fixing a meta because in this game there's nothing wrong with it. Your issues with it are community based the game is pretty well balanced

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by thegreatonemal

Making a new meta changes nothing people will get on that train leaving any classes that fall out of that meta behind. There's no fixing a meta because in this game there's nothing wrong with it. Your issues with it are community based the game is pretty well balanced

---

Totaly right.

I don't know why so much players bother about 10% over 10s over a 10min battle, it's so little.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by thegreatonemal

Making a new meta changes nothing people will get on that train leaving any classes that fall out of that meta behind. There's no fixing a meta because in this game there's nothing wrong with it. Your issues with it are community based the game is pretty well balanced

---

If there's nothing wrong with it, there'd be no threads about it. As it stands, there are quite a few, on the NA/EU AND the JP forums. Clearly people care, you don't have to look far to see that. And it's relevant as ever in the game, when certain Jobs carry a stigma with them. Not in all content, I'll give you that. But it's enough to where it's worth talking about. Never grow complacent with things being "Average" or mediocre. Always strive for better. Or at least, that's what SE SHOULD be doing.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LeoLupinos

I fear everyone will just take the better one.

---

The idea would be to swap for whatever party composition makes the most sense as far as ROLE (melee/phys-range/mag-range), not JOB. If you wanted slashing for the tanks, and melee, you have to take a ranged (MCH or BRD would give you the same benefits). If you wanted piercing for the phys-ranged, you'd need a melee (SAM, MNK, NIN, or DRG would all benefit you the same). Etc etc.

The one thing that's kind of terrible regardless, is resistance debuffs, which flat out shouldn't exist anymore as they're too restrictive, even in the best of scenarios. But they seem to really believe it's some miracle of gameplay to tie together Jobs like that.

Poor monk.... will no one give us blunt debuff?? ;)

One of the suggestions that would be a bit better than redistributing the buffs would be to change how some of them work entirely. As well as your suggestions introduce new problems. Just like DRG is pretty much mandatory right now because of the piercing debuff they bring, BRD under your suggestions will have an always include position in a group given they could have the slashing debuff no one else gets in addition to the other plethora of utility buffs they have. Additionally if the damage debuffs are cross role skills, I would expect, especially in roulettes and 24-man content, no one will take these skills.

So here's another way to handle that:
remove blunt resist down, slashing resist down, and piercing resist down from the game entirely. Replace the skills on all jobs that have them with magic resist down and physical resist down. My suggestion is to distribute those skills between samurai, monk, dragoon, and ninja with magic resist down going onto ninja and monk and physical resist down on dragoon and samurai.

It would create a situation of one of two melee jobs for each slot, but it does change things from the pretty much mandatory DRG/NIN load out, but still leaves raid groups alone that are currently running that combo.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by wereotter

It would create a situation of one of two melee jobs for each slot, but it does change things from the pretty much mandatory DRG/NIN load out, but still leaves raid groups alone that are currently running that combo.

---

Yeah, I've said it every time I've brought this up (some of those times in this thread): Resistance debuffs are incredibly restrictive and just shouldn't exist. If they HAVE to exist, like the developers (or at least YoshiP) seem to believe, they NEED to be spread out in a way where there's no lopsided representation. So I'd agree your idea (one that's been shared a lot) is good, but it needs removed.

I don't see how making jobs even more similar to each other is a good thing and damage would obviously need to be adjusted, just imagine the dps of a samurai with access to the raid utility of trick attack.

Just because it's a problem, doesn't means it's a problem that can be fixed in the game.

Until we remove the job system and give everyone every ability, þherrs always going to be "something" that's objectively better than "something else". At which point the optimisation crowd will flock to a meta and it'll infect the community.

Meanwhile all this homogenization in the name of 'balance' is progressively sucking all the variety and depth from the game.

There's nothing wrong with synergy, just provide it in various places instead of just one.
Give damage type debuffs to a couple other classes.

You can't really "fix" a meta, because it is not a hard-set state of the game. It is a fluid state of the game created by the players based on what they consider the most viable at the time. As soon as SE changes how classes work or any other "meta-change" updates; a new meta will form and people will be complaining about being left out of that meta. The only way to not have a meta is to make every class EXACTLY the same, at which point, why have classes at all?

Not saying any of your ideas are bad, just pointing out there is a lot of time and thought going in to "fixing" something that is just going to re-manifest itself infinitely.

I posted a possible solution to this problem in the thread "Disembowel: Please Fix this Mess," since this is virtually the same topic. Go check it out if you are interested.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Remyogic

You can't really "fix" a meta, because it is not a hard-set state of the game. It is a fluid state of the game created by the players based on what they consider the most viable at the time. As soon as SE changes how classes work or any other "meta-change" updates; a new meta will form and people will be complaining about being left out of that meta. The only way to not have a meta is to make every class EXACTLY the same, at which point, why have classes at all?

Not saying any of your ideas are bad, just pointing out there is a lot of time and thought going in to "fixing" something that is just going to re-manifest itself infinitely.

---

Not entirely true that it'd just re-manifest itself. It comes down to smart implementation. I mean, 2.x only really had TA, and Disembowel. Even still, most Jobs people felt to have an identity then. So I'm confused why people are so afraid of losing these things that weren't integral to the flavor of the Job before. Especially when they could be replaced with abilities that are more meaningful, gameplay wise.

I mained DRG coming up to 4.0, and even played a little of 4.0 with it. I love the Job. I never once felt like Battle Litany was why I loved the Job. Nor was it Disembowel. I don't get the love for these things, they don't bring flavor to the Job, at all. That'd be like playing MNK for Brotherhood when the Job is more interesting because of the GL effect.

There will always be something that is more optimal regardless of what you do, there are several metas in this game be it progression or otherwise. The issue is that the speed kill meta you are referring to is taken as a be all end all by players that don't understand what it's for. This content can and has been beaten by non meta groups with no issues and most of the ppl complaining don't play optimally enough to even really benefit from the meta comp.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tsubaki75

There will always be something that is more optimal regardless of what you do, there are several metas in this game be it progression or otherwise. The issue is that the speed kill meta you are referring to is taken as a be all end all by players that don't understand what it's for. This content can and has been beaten by non meta groups with no issues and most of the ppl complaining don't play optimally enough to even really benefit from the meta comp.

---

Nobody discussing this is saying that it's the most devastating thing ever. It should go without saying that all of these discussions take place because, no matter how small the margin, people want the game to be better and improve where it can. It... SHOULD go without saying. But the more common notion, is that campaigning for a better game is stupid because, "Lol Ultimate is so ez any Job can clear lololol". It's not a bad thing to care about wanting better, even if it's a slight improvement that you're wanting.

Listen, I get that speed-killing isn't taking place within the entire community at large. But the visibility of it, and the popularity of a certain website has changed how (some) people approach the game, and the perception of balance. Fact is, Job changes are largely based on community feedback. That feedback is based on the perception of balance in this game, and their experiences. That is shaped by things like that website, and the visibility it gives of the most popular and effective compositions, and the upper limit of individual Jobs. It doesn't really matter how many people take advantage of a strong tactic, it just matters that it exists, and can be seen. And to be frank, I never understood the argument that, "Not many people speed-kill anyway." As if that's supposed to help the argument? So if only a couple people could take advantage of Ungarmax, it doesn't really matter? Only a couple people can really pull off a speedhack, so that's not a problem? Okay.

Again, it's not a crime to care about something. You pay for this product at the end of the day, too. It's cool if you don't care about what you're getting for your money. I choose to, so just like the other people who want better, I'll keep talking about it.

The only problem with 'synergy stacking' is the perception of the players who think it defines the whole the game. The solution to that is to correct your perceptions instead of trying to fix what ain't broke.

The reality is that this game has a wide variety of content and is balanced holistically with that in mind. The optimal strategy for progression isn't necessarily the same as the one for speed, even light party and open world content have their own favoured jobs. In this context you can see that the game is actually pretty balanced with a niche for almost every job, I think it's folly to take something only 0.001% of the playerbase does seriously and try to shoehorn the entire game around that.

I think that the sooner people make their peace with that, the happier they will be because it's clear to me the game isn't going in that direction anyway. If you recall Yoshi-P's comments on why RDM's damage is fine, or why SMN's physick isn't on the level of vercure, you can see that things like job identity, and the big picture are a lot more important to them than narrow balance for balance's sake.

Personally as someone who grew up with fighting games and RTSes, I don't understand why some speed-oriented players are so insistent on having SE balance the game for them. If you operate on the cutting edge, your job is basically to find ways to break the game to your advantage, and you should expect to have to find and have to use all kinds of outlier strategies. When it comes down to it, this isn't really a performance oriented game either, even the hardest content it offers is structured around execution instead of raw numbers. Speedrunning is basically a community organized alternative activity that occurs outside the bounds of normal play, there is no obligation for them to balance around it. I mean, imagine if the whole community suddenly decided that open-world footraces was the new big thing, and people started clamouring for everyone to get the same level of mobility as dragoons and ninjas. Don't you think that would be a bit silly?

Indeed, any class can clear any content, and any party composition (excluding those with multiples of the same class in some cases) can too.
What that says to me is that "meta" is essentially "easy mode".
If people would focus to playing their chosen job well rather than choosing the job that is easier to play or gives them bigger numbers, then maybe the meta wouldn't be a thing.

Ultimately though it comes down to trusting in the ability of other players, and that's why we have a meta, because easier jobs = greater chance the person playing it is competent. We're all just too cynical and inpatient.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Myon88

Don't you think that would be a bit silly?

---

I'd agree with you if it weren't for the fact that they literally already do balance based on those things you're describing as folly to balance around. Like I said, it's not the amount of people that take advantage of it that matters, it's the visibility and perception that does. You can't fix the latter, which is why they do make changes to Jobs in the first place, aside from general QoL adjustments.

Why do you think Disembowel got nerfed, and NO other resistances got nerfed coming into 4.0? Because of Job identity? No. Because of the double-ranged meta in 3.4. And just like now, any Job could clear anything just fine. It's a tired argument, because just like then, it is incredibly strong. For that matter, PLD could clear any content in 3.x too, but people still complained about not being in the Meta, and being mostly ignored for changes in 3.x and where do we see PLD now? You think that's a coincidence? It's the community's feedback, which is usually based on the upper limit of a Job's performance, and group strengths. So you say the community's perception is at fault, not the game? The community's thoughts (including about the meta), and game balance are directly tied to one another, and we have tons of evidence of that.

And since you bring up fighting games, me too. And frankly, it's not a 1:1 comparison. Fighting game 'meta' has far more variables, and can be overcome by even more variables. Good match-ups, match-up knowledge, player matchups and knowledge, and just generally being better with your character. In XIV, you can't really overcome a "Top Tier", because they factually are just stronger, or as a fact, just offer more to the party. Some of it comes down to what is being emphasized as important, too, which is partly the community's issue. Part of the onus is on the developer there to emphasize what's important in their own game too though, since of course they're the ones creating it. Right now, they've emphasized party synergy elements. 3/4th of the present Jobs have something significant to offer the party, with about 7 of those (almost half the existing roster) receiving these elements in 4.0. They're pushing this aspect of the game hard, while leaving some Jobs untouched in hopes of creating diversity, but instead, those Jobs are just viewed as lacking, and rightly so. They're in the minority (only about 3 of 15 Jobs).

Now, it's not that you need to overcome the "Meta". You don't. But it's important that if one exists, it's one that is based more around auxiliary elements (like cross role) than it is anything else.

It's certainly true that they do actively tune PvE output, it is a big part of the game after all, and the impression of fairness is important if you want to maintain good relations with your playerbase. However, where perception comes into play is the fact that when it comes to DPS differentials, the tolerances that players expect are invariably an order of magnitude tighter than the target SE themselves aims for.

The competitive nature of speedrunning and the players that take part in it mean that any difference no matter how small gets magnified by hyperbole and the all-or-nothing nature of relative performance. As long as something is measurably better, it will be seized upon as the new hotness and people will find another set of jobs to complain about. You just can't win with these people.

There's also the matter I brought up of there being many disparate and valid avenues of battle content in the game. Selfish jobs like BLM and SAM already do disproportionately well in small group content where there's less opportunity to exploit the compounding effect of party buffs (not to mention less people to buff). You can say such content isn't as important as savage or ultimate, but if that was the case, why would they repeatedly nerf things like SMN's painflare when savage has no meaningful aoe? Things like that make me suspect they take a more holistic view of job balance.

So if you ask me, how this pertains to balance w.r.t the raid composition metagame is that optimal compositions should be treated as emergent phenomena, not the baseline for comparison. Different toolkits flourish in different niches in this game, jobs that excel at aoe and personal contribution excel in dungeons, RDM is a solo wizard when it comes to things like PotD - so I don't see why it is so offensive to people that jobs with synergistic buffs excel in an environment that lets you compound them. The fundamental challenge of raids is simply to clear them, and any auxiliary conditions you attach to that outcome are self-made. Remember that the etymology of the word 'metagame' is literally the game within the game. When you operate on the fringes of the playerbase and are making up your own rules, you have to be prepared to accept some concessions, it comes with the territory.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Myon88

"so I don't see why it is so offensive to people that jobs with synergistic buffs excel in an environment that lets you compound them."

---

I can't speak for everyone, but I have to assume that it's because the content that the crowd views as largely important (that they partake in) is the content that they feel disparity in, or care about their performance in. Nobody's bringing up dungeon, Deep Dungeon, Eureka, or other content balance. Largely because it's viewed as unimportant to the measure of a player's skill, or a Job's upper limit of output. In other words, the "Standard" and "Not-Casual" content (not ONLY) to judge Job capabilities on, is Savage and Ultimate. Of course, like you said, that butts heads with the combat developers in some sense, since they seem to internally balance for the whole of the game, and only balance reactionary to feedback to keep people happy.

I think the people who don't view it as problematic are probably the people who either don't care about balance at all, play all Jobs more or less equally, have never had to deal with PF/Recruiting for a Static, or are playing the Jobs that don't experience any disparity. That's a fine place to find yourself, and I value their opinion. I just don't think that any of the synergy in the game right now, sans Brotherhood and Dragon Sight, have any interesting gameplay applications, and only really exist to give a reason to bring a specific Job to the party over another. And if you can't offer interesting synergy to every Job, or spread it roughly equally amongst them, or balance it appropriately, then you shouldn't have it in the game at all, or at least try to keep it extremely niche and limited.

There's a much easier 3 step solution:
* Remove Disembowel
* Buff all drg potencies by 5%
* Buff mch potencies by 3%

Job combinations would be lenient enough off those changes alone. The differences in other comps outputs would be close enough to almost be ignored.

Inb4 bard tears. Let's be real here, even taking a 5% loss on your personal damage, brd would still be the star child dps every group wants because their contribution would still be high enough to outweigh that personal loss, while still having the most insane support ability kit on a dps. If anything, be glad brd wouldn't be shackled to needing a drg.

What if heat makes so MCH weaponskills are fire non piercing attacks?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LeoLupinos

Totaly right.

I don't know why so much players bother about 10% over 10s over a 10min battle, it's so little.

---

If you looked at raid DPS calculators, you would see why. In a good group, TA can give ~900 rDPS to 7 other people. This game is all about damage, since healing is overpowered, and enmity is a joke for any tank that knows a proper opener. The only thing left to focus on for tanks and healers is damage, just like the 4 DPS in the party. So the meta stacks rBuffs to give the party more damage.

That being said, Disembowel is the real culprit in terms of the current meta at hand—where as TA can give anywhere from 90 DPS to 150 DPS to a single person, Disembowel gives ~300 DPS: it’s +5% damage for the entirety of the fight, which is why BRDs and MCHs that care about their damage will always want a DRG with them, and any group running BOTH BRD/MCH would be out of their mind to not bring a DRG for that +~600 free rDPS.


As for the OP’s suggestion, I disagree with it, mainly on the account that resistance down debuffs should not even be included in these new “role actions”. They are all redundant at this point, with only BRD/MCH being unable to apply their own, and should be removed entirely in 5.0 — with minor adjustments to DRG’s damage, since they will be severely hurting at that point, and maybe a slight tweak to at least MCH, who is already getting replaced in speed kill comps by BLM or SMN, and who severely lacks in both utility and damage. BRD may have low damage, but it is the master of utility (and always has been since 2.0) so it can at least compensate in some shape or form.

It is also worth considering that this would just cause more of the same issues that the current role actions have for some jobs, in which there are no “options” in terms of what to bring, only the illusion of it. For example: physical ranged have 2 mandatory skills (Refresh and Tactician), 1 semi-mandatory skill (Palisade—for physical damage), and 2 skills that they usually prefer to have at all times (Second Wind and Invigorate); the remaining skills are either useless in combat (SWIFTSONG—never not going to call Peloton that), highly situational (Head Graze), or completely useless (Leg Graze, Arm Graze, Foot Graze—I put Arm Graze in here not because the stun is worthless per say, but that it’s never been used since 4.0 launched, and other jobs already have stun options—only physical ranged have a silence outside of NIN’s Jugulate, and tanks can bring something more useful to them instead of Interject). Adding something like Foe Requiem to their arsenal would just further remove the illusion of optional role action skills, and put another mandatory skill in there.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Seraphor

Give damage type debuffs to a couple other classes.

---

Literally the only two that don’t have them are BRD/MCH—all other DPS (and WAR) can apply the resistance downs the buff their own damage. And since Yoshida has already said that he is not okay with BRD/MCH being OP and having their own piercing (yet perfectly fine with them being OP with a DRG in the party), they aren’t getting their respective damage downs. And if they did, then the debuffs are just redundant since they will never not be on a boss. Might as well remove them from the game from that point.

Sure you can argue to give piercing to RDM, but I would be more for just removing them entirely. They were something that should have gone with 4.0’s release, rather than have 1 nerfed by 5%—which didn’t destroy the physical meta at all until BLM and SMN began to pull enough damage to replace MCH (BRD didn’t go anywhere).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Remedi

What if heat makes so MCH weaponskills are fire non piercing attacks?

---

That still doesn’t answer the piercing problem with regards to BRD, or with MCH’s other active time this is not spent Overheating. I stand by what I keep telling you in other threads—remove the resistence downs. They offer no synergy other than 1 comp, which people have been complaining about for almost 2 years. Get rid of them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Myon88

Personally as someone who grew up with fighting games and RTSes, I don't understand why some speed-oriented players are so insistent on having SE balance the game for them.

---

Because they recognize the trickle down effect. Less skilled players are going to look at the better players and structure their own groups around them, thus you see certain jobs locked out. This also impacts recruitment. You see less and less groups willing to accept Samurais right now because they're woefully inferior to any of their melee counterparts, assuming equal skill. Furthermore, you do not have to be a speed kill 99% static to care about your performance. Currently, Bard and Machinist severe immensely without a Dragoon. I certainly cannot begrudge people who play those respective jobs feeling disappointed when no other job suffers such a damage loss with no trade off. Despite the meme, most players complain do not necessarily want certain jobs to be meta, they want them to be more competitive.

"Job identity" is a poor excuse. Samurai's "job identity" was supposed to be high damage yet all three melee contribute more than an equally skilled Samurai. The devs have an entire different perspective on how we play than how we actually do. Hence Yoshida's recent lament over how infrequent Warrior's use Defiance. They've given us virtually no reason to touch it outside pulls. Therefore, we don't.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by thegreatonemal

Making a new meta changes nothing people will get on that train leaving any classes that fall out of that meta behind. There's no fixing a meta because in this game there's nothing wrong with it. Your issues with it are community based the game is pretty well balanced

---

If this were true, why has Summoner clawed its way into speed kill groups? Why does Monk has a pretty decent representation despite Dragoon and Ninja being superior? People will accept jobs which are close enough to one another that a slight loss won't be as noticeable.

To truely fix the meta you need to remove slashing, blunt, piercing buffs and party buffs... then balance them around damage vs mobility...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

That still doesn’t answer the piercing problem with regards to BRD, or with MCH’s other active time this is not spent Overheating. I stand by what I keep telling you in other threads—remove the resistence downs. They offer no synergy other than 1 comp, which people have been complaining about for almost 2 years. Get rid of them.

---

I keep telling that it will simply shift the blame to something else, look let's just not start again, we don't agree with this