Some thoughts on Level Sync and Abilities

Going forward with the game moving on to more expansions, it feels like there needs to be changes made to how classes work when level synced, as the extremely limited move set presented to people at the lowest level dungeons is not particularly good.

I'm not sure exactly what things need to be done to make this work, but my feeling is to not worry so much about ability acquisition during the leveling up process and make it so players go out and complete quests to gain abilities. If players get to a point in the game where those abilities are necessary, they should get blocked by the content by simply not being able to continue. It sounds kind of harsh, but as long as there is some kind of indicator that tells them where to go to learn their next ability (like the archer guild or lancer guild), that would work far better than having a system where the abilities are unlocked via the job story quests, where it's easy for someone to just forget where the next quest starts.

Will lower level content be easier for players with abilities unlocked? Absolutely yes, but that is the whole point. It would also be nice to be able to unlock new looks for skills, such as Heavy shot and stone, and be able to use those looks at any level regardless of the skill. We unlock glare at level 73+, but then we have to use stone for the majority of content anyway.

I think it would be good to be able to have a ravana themed move set, with dark knight abilities that have the red butterfly glow, or have an Eden themed gravity move set for certain abilities from Astro and Summoner.

They really should take a page from GW2 in how syncing down works.

Its significantly more elegant than "Lol guess you only have a couple buttons to press"

A lot of people cite that if they got a sprout tank, th wouldn't be able to keep up agro against dps, but with the 5.xx changes to how tanks work, that point is moot. As stated above they should really do level synch like GW2.

With 5.0 they've neutered low-level play so badly in order to fix high level play that I don't see how new people can think the game is fun.

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Originally Posted by Barraind

They really should take a page from GW2 in how syncing down works.

Its significantly more elegant than "Lol guess you only have a couple buttons to press"

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Yeah, but with gw2, you already only have very few buttons to press.

I think some jobs have more in sastasha than you get total in gw2 lol

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Yeah, but with gw2, you already only have very few buttons to press.

I think some jobs have more in sastasha than you get total in gw2 lol

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True. And it's understandable why here they're doing that. Just like their reasoning for not letting BLU queue into duty finder, because "some might kick you for not having a certain ability". But why not allow people who enter through party finder to have all their abilities while synced down in this case?

Because balancing. It starts getting a lot harder to tweak all the numbers when you've got more skills available while synced than you did when you were originally that level.

A BLM synced to level 20 with level 20 skills only needs to be balanced around a level 20 BLM.

A BLM synced to level 20 with level 80 skills, and now you've gotta figure out how to rebalance everything they have at 80 to be equivalent to what they would've had at 20.

The high level player with all their skills needs to play much more optimally than the at-level player just to meet the same damage output.

Any rotation flubs or missteps will be significantly more detrimental to the high level player.

And before anyone says "oh, well, that should still be easy, just tweak those potencies!" Ok. That was one example, at level 80. Need to have a different balance at 79 before Xenoglossy is part of your rotation. And another balance at 77 before Enochian gets boosted. And again at 75 before Umbral Soul. 73 before Enhanced Sharpcast. Etc etc etc. Balancing and adjustments needed every step of the way, at any point your rotation changes or improves, just to keep it all equivalent to the level 20 BLM.

Or. Instead of allllll that work. They could just sync you down to actually be level 20 and make everyone's lives a whole lot easier.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Because balancing. It starts getting a lot harder to tweak all the numbers when you've got more skills available while synced than you did when you were originally that level.

A BLM synced to level 20 with level 20 skills only needs to be balanced around a level 20 BLM.

A BLM synced to level 20 with level 80 skills, and now you've gotta figure out how to rebalance everything they have at 80 to be equivalent to what they would've had at 20.

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1) All skills would be normalized by synced down weapon damage

2) Perhaps said BLM needs to learn a thing called aggro management. I have seen many who decided to skip that class (before the SB changes)

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

1) All skills would be normalized by synced down weapon damage

2) Perhaps said BLM needs to learn a thing called aggro management. I have seen many who decided to skip that class (before the SB changes)

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Aggro is irrelevant in this example. I literally did not mention it once. No part of the "balancing" argument even considers aggro. Because that is the very last thing to worry about, when you stop to look at how it's not remotely as simple as you think it is to just "normalize" damage.

More importantly, the whole point was an example. Pick any job you like. PLD needs balancing just the same, adjusting each step of the way to keep the synced 80 PLD on par with the actual 20 PLD (or gladiator at that point). The level 80 WHM needs balanced so that it's on par, heals and all, with the level 20 CNJ. (frankly, perhaps BLM was the worst example to pick with their lack of utility. BLM would probably be the simplest to balance in this way; any other job and you've got to start factoring in party buffs that those jobs are expected to maintain as well, further complicating the balancing act)

Syncing down to any level while retaining all skills would require a monumental amount of work to maintain parity with players actually at those levels. The synced player would have to put in significantly more work just to match a mediocre new player. And if the synced player happens to be sub-optimal themselves, then they become little more than dead weight for the rest of the group.

And, again, since I'm not really sure where you got the idea in the first place, aggro isn't remotely part of this argument I'm making.

I look to it more like not needing to use a level 80 rotation for level 20 content. If you want to do that, you do you, but the presumption that difficulty should be scaled up for this possibility is obviously a detriment to the legit level 20s. Otherwise, with how frugal AoE options can be below level 40, I imagine a good number of jobs would appreciate having their moves available, albeit weakened, for if they do roll into an older dungeon.

Honestly to me the only content I feel really lacks any fun for a sync is anything sub 60.

From 60 most jobs have a pretty big kit and can let you get your bearings down for getting the core of your rotation. Like a BLM at sub 60 not having Fire IV just feels so wrong since that's your main mp user.

GNB is one where at 60 I think the kit offers a good amount and the rest to 80 are buffs or help build on it.

I would like to keep my skills even in sync dungeons/bossfights. While all stats will be sync'ed, there should be a problem to keep them with their potencys.

Its just weird, that our beloved hero just forgot how to fight properly just by re-entering a old dungeon. "Oh Sastasha! Long time... but... ah... ummmm... how am I doing this flashy light spell I spammed a few mins ago?" *snips fingers* (WHM - Holy)

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Originally Posted by Caitlyn

I would like to keep my skills even in sync dungeons/bossfights. While all stats will be sync'ed, there should be a problem to keep them with their potencys.

Its just weird, that our beloved hero just forgot how to fight properly just by re-entering a old dungeon. "Oh Sastasha! Long time... but... ah... ummmm... how am I doing this flashy light spell I spammed a few mins ago?" *snips fingers* (WHM - Holy)

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You aren't re-entering the dungeon, you are experiencing the past through the echo. Otherwise the same bosses would never be there :p

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

You aren't re-entering the dungeon, you are experiencing the past through the echo. Otherwise the same bosses would never be there :p

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When I m experiencing my past, why I can do it with other classes? And other people in my group? And be able to do it Unsync?

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Originally Posted by Caitlyn

When I m experiencing my past, why I can do it with other classes? And other people in my group? And be able to do it Unsync?

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Because game mechanics still need to happen. However, your point that your char suddenly forgot how to use their skills can still be explained if they still haven't learned them yet because echo

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Originally Posted by Caitlyn

When I m experiencing my past, why I can do it with other classes? And other people in my group? And be able to do it Unsync?

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Because locking you to a single class/job in a dungeon forever would be a very bad idea in a game that promotes multiclassing. Same reasoning applies to the MSQ, why you can somehow be a PLD in one quest and then be a SMN in another, it's a suspension of lore for basic game functions. Unsyncing is just a convenience feature, but canonically you went through the dungeon with a group of adventurers at the proper level of experience you were at during that time.

But lore wise, you are only reliving your experience of the dungeon through the echo, hence you can't use abilities you hadn't learned yet at that level of adventuring.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Because game mechanics still need to happen. However, your point that your char suddenly forgot how to use their skills can still be explained if they still haven't learned them yet because echo

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Then how explain how my character forgot how to reload his gun with Shadowbringers. Or why cards doing now different things ; )
Its video game logic, it dont need to be explained xD

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Syncing down to any level while retaining all skills would require a monumental amount of work to maintain parity with players actually at those levels. The synced player would have to put in significantly more work just to match a mediocre new player. And if the synced player happens to be sub-optimal themselves, then they become little more than dead weight for the rest of the group.

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Out of curiosity, have you ever tried to gear sync yourself? By which I mean going into low level content with outdated gear while out leveling it. It's pretty easy to balance an over leveled character to a dungeon in terms of DPS, provided gear can go low enough. We just need multiplier applied to DPS. The idea that it's something so complicated is at odds with the balance of the entire game through the leveling process which accounts for wild variation in effectiveness of different players already. The perfect THM will outDPS the perfect LNC in an AoE situation by 2, maybe 3 times as it is now. There is no precise balancing required, that's only for end game. The rough numbers for potency sync are already available to SE anyway since boss HP needs to scale with player progression.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

Aggro is irrelevant in this example. I literally did not mention it once. No part of the "balancing" argument even considers aggro. Because that is the very last thing to worry about, when you stop to look at how it's not remotely as simple as you think it is to just "normalize" damage.

More importantly, the whole point was an example. Pick any job you like. PLD needs balancing just the same, adjusting each step of the way to keep the synced 80 PLD on par with the actual 20 PLD (or gladiator at that point). The level 80 WHM needs balanced so that it's on par, heals and all, with the level 20 CNJ. (frankly, perhaps BLM was the worst example to pick with their lack of utility. BLM would probably be the simplest to balance in this way; any other job and you've got to start factoring in party buffs that those jobs are expected to maintain as well, further complicating the balancing act)

Syncing down to any level while retaining all skills would require a monumental amount of work to maintain parity with players actually at those levels. The synced player would have to put in significantly more work just to match a mediocre new player. And if the synced player happens to be sub-optimal themselves, then they become little more than dead weight for the rest of the group.

And, again, since I'm not really sure where you got the idea in the first place, aggro isn't remotely part of this argument I'm making.

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Because aggro is the first thing that most level sync ability naysayers always go to.

How will the level appropriate tank keep aggro on a lvl 80 BLM with all of their skills!

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Originally Posted by Deceptus

Because aggro is the first thing that most level sync ability naysayers always go to.

How will the level appropriate tank keep aggro on a lvl 80 BLM with all of their skills!

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To be fair, that was before the tank changes in 5.0. I haven't seen anyone saying that since.

People still arguin about this?
In a level 20 dungeon you will habe your job at level 20, if you dont like thay do a level 70+ dungeon.
Pretty simple

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Originally Posted by Barraind

They really should take a page from GW2 in how syncing down works.

Its significantly more elegant than "Lol guess you only have a couple buttons to press"

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Personally, i wouldn't mind it if they took a page out of how Blizzard did it's scaling. They were able to change the legion mobs (especially in dungeons) where you would have a level 100 and a level 110 fighting a boss, and rather than the 110 just stomping the enemy, they would both act as if they're fighting a to-level version of the mob (both damaging it and getting damaged by it accordingly); and in the dungeons themselves, the inter-party abilities like heals would also get the same treatment (so a level 100 can heal a level 110 and heal them as if it was being tossed out by an appropriately leveled player). The only part where it fell short was accounting for ilvl, but that doesn't mean sqe couldn't try to improve it for that.

Either way though, whether they do something like this or something that is just their own; it needs to be improved to be better than it is. The higher the level cap go, the more the problems you encounter by doing lower level dungeons will be exasperated because all but a small handful of dungeons you can do are made for the max level players.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

To be fair, that was before the tank changes in 5.0. I haven't seen anyone saying that since.

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If a PLD and a BLM are both in Satasha and the BLM is chucking fouls/flares/freezes out like candy I think the damage alone will take over (even with it being synced) since that's so much more going out over the PLD's Total Eclipse.

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Originally Posted by Noitems

If a PLD and a BLM are both in Satasha and the BLM is chucking fouls/flares/freezes out like candy I think the damage alone will take over (even with it being synced) since that's so much more going out over the PLD's Total Eclipse.

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I think the worst thing that can happen in this discussion is assume that changes like this would happen in a vacuum and its almost dishonest to argue from a point where further changes wouldn't happen in tandem with the requested change.

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How will the level appropriate tank keep aggro on a lvl 80 BLM with all of their skills!

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Because 14 scales everything by potency, which is based on synced ilvl and synced clvl.

Flare is only slightly more potency than the first tank AE on secondary targets (6 or 26 based on class), and thats before tank stance threat mods.


The levels that would be the hardest are those from 35-48, where your Brand New stuff is out-of-date and you arent going to have full sets of dungeon gear to replace them.

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3) Doesn't leave people OP beyond belief.

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That ship sailed years ago in low level instances.

You can walk into the first 5 or 6 dungeons in Brand New gear, ring, preorder earring, and friendship circlet over a helm with stats and you're still doing significantly more damage and better healing than anything was tuned for.


Syncing this way would affect the end instances of ARR and the leveling dungeons in HW far more than anything else.

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Originally Posted by Noitems

If a PLD and a BLM are both in Satasha and the BLM is chucking fouls/flares/freezes out like candy I think the damage alone will take over (even with it being synced) since that's so much more going out over the PLD's Total Eclipse.

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Try it. Go into a low level dungeon unsyced as a high level BLM with only a level 1 or so weapon. Then compare that to a synced PLD. The BLM is very easily going to lose once its stat drop enough.

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Originally Posted by Noitems

If a PLD and a BLM are both in Satasha and the BLM is chucking fouls/flares/freezes out like candy I think the damage alone will take over (even with it being synced) since that's so much more going out over the PLD's Total Eclipse.

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New tank stance is a 10x enmity modifier, making total eclipse a 1200 potency per GCD enmity battery. (Though factoring in tank damage penalties, its closer to 1000).

Unless its a barely geared tank, enmity is pretty much a non-issue. The bigger issue is as described on the 1st page:

Creating a system that:

1) Creates parity between low level and high level players for literally every single instance of the game, balancing around literally every single trait and skill you earn up along the way against every other potential instance you can get into.
2) Doesn't leave everyone weaker if they can't perfectly execute their rotation (normalizing potencies by targeting max level play)
3) Doesn't leave people OP beyond belief. (normalizing potencies by targeting mid level play, creating a huge power vacuum between players who don't know their rotations vs ones who do and leaving the good players severely overpowered in old instances)
4) can balance skills to still be used, but not rendered utterly useless. (Hallowed ground being OP to literally anything a low level GLD can do, Benediction/Tetra/Regens/Assylum annihilating anything a CNJ can do, etc.)

While not impossible, it's going to be far too much effort for too little gain in the dev's eyes. Not to mention they'd then have to literally revamp the entire system any time substantial changes to jobs happen mid-expansion, or completely re-write and re-do the system when the new expansion comes out due to it completely changing roations, etc.

From the times I've QA'd modular systems in other games and seeing the dead, lifeless eyes and frustrated groans of the devs there, I can pretty much guarantee the devs will stick with the syncing system they have to save themselves from a colossal nightmare inducing balancing headache.

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Originally Posted by MariaArvana

While not impossible, it's going to be far too much effort for too little gain in the dev's eyes. Not to mention they'd then have to literally revamp the entire system any time substantial changes to jobs happen mid-expansion, or completely re-write and re-do the system when the new expansion comes out due to it completely changing roations, etc.

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But the old content doesn't need rebalancing despite the issues that you mention already existing. PLD for example went from not having AoE to getting it by the first dungeon. It hasn't really cause any balancing upsets. You're applying really right standards to balancing when the game doesn't.

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From the times I've QA'd modular systems in other games and seeing the dead, lifeless eyes and frustrated groans of the devs there, I can pretty much guarantee the devs will stick with the syncing system they have to save themselves from a colossal nightmare inducing balancing headache.

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No one is really in a position to say how hard it would be to add potency scaling to the game, coding wise, except SE. It's not really fruitful to bring up, at least in my opinion. Conceptually though, there isn't actually much to it. FF14 has a level curve already. What we're missing is something to scale down high level players to fit the curve. The game doesn't change drastically from level 1 to 80. Fighting mobs at either end is pretty much the same except at high level mobs have scaled HP.

The easiest point to make is that low level dungeons were never meant to be remotely difficult in the first place. Even in ARR, the penalty for not doing Orcatooth and Gyge's and Firemane's mechanics is inconveninece. You could heal through the adds if they spawn, or the party damage, and you have an absolute eternity before they do. Aside from possibly healers, I don't see a full skillset with reduced potency altering the already compromised "experience" of something like Sastasha or Halatali.

Balance starts to become more of a concern once you're approaching 45-50 and frankly there is no saving those dungeons. People walk through Praetorium and Wanderer's Palace and the like barely having to heal. Past 50, everything becomes much closer together so the extra skills can coexist more easily.

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Originally Posted by Verlyn

Balance starts to become more of a concern once you're approaching 45-50 and frankly there is no saving those dungeons. People walk through Praetorium and Wanderer's Palace and the like barely having to heal. Past 50, everything becomes much closer together so the extra skills can coexist more easily.

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In fairness, those two instances (and others right around them) are sorta poor examples due to the wide ilvl range. Minimum for Prae is i42. Wanderer's is i45. Prae doesn't have a max sync, so most are running it synced to a hypothetical i130 or so (I assume), and through job quests players should be able to far surpass i42 with little effort or deviation. Wanderer's is synced to max i110, so, that's still a huge range, between pre-50 stats and what you can achieve with just a handful of Poetics.

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Originally Posted by MariaArvana

(Though factoring in tank damage penalties, its closer to 1000)

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???

There are no "tank damage penalties". Tank stances only increase threat now. That's it. The new tank trait that substitutes for old stance effects is a flat 20% damage reduction, and increased stat weight for vitality and strength (which, if anything, means they do more damage now).

I see weird stuff like this constantly on the OF and can't figure out where it even starts.

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Originally Posted by YojimboM

???

There are no "tank damage penalties". Tank stances only increase threat now. That's it. The new tank trait that substitutes for old stance effects is a flat 20% damage reduction, and increased stat weight for vitality and strength (which, if anything, means they do more damage now).

I see weird stuff like this constantly on the OF and can't figure out where it even starts.

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Not the tank stance, no.

The tank trait mastery actually nerfs tank damage by making STR worth less point per point than other jobs. Otherwise tanks would be doing much closer to dps than they are now due to the fact they gained a TON of str on their accessories the instant SHB started on top of gaining huge potencies to their rotation due to SHB changes, yet were only seeing very minor gains to dps by the time they reached 80 conmpared to their SB numbers, when the potencies and STR changes should have given them a several hundred to a thousand dps gains.

Tank mastery is literally giving you the positive effects of old tank stance's mitigation while nerfing your damage output by weakening the value of STR for tanks. And it starts in discords like the Balance where people do painstaking amounts of math and testing to figure out how the internals of the game work. Tank's are literally > 20% weaker proportionally with the same amount of STR than they were in SB due to the existence of the tank mastery trait.

Ergo, most of the potencies you see on tanks, when you want to compare them to a dps's potencies by relation, are roughly 20-30% weaker. hence Total eclipse can stave off about 1000 potency from actual dps jobs, whereas the sticker value for it says 1200.

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The tank trait mastery actually nerfs tank damage by making STR worth less point per point than other jobs.

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As someone who has been doing math work on tanks (and crafters), you're going to need to put some sources for that, because its something that nobody else is talking about.

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tanks would be doing much closer to dps than they are now due to the fact they gained a TON of str on their accessories the instant SHB started on top of gaining huge potencies to their rotation due to SHB changes, yet were only seeing very minor gains to dps

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Significantly more changed besides strength on accessories between 70 and 80. Tanks melded for those stats on accessories prior to this, so the actual gain stat-wise this expansion is almost negligible. You gain between 72 and 120 secondary stats per piece (since you're melding those and not mainstat), compared to the relative value of those slots in SB.

If you want to look purely at tank damage at 70 with everything re-melded, you can, but the relative difference isnt -20%.

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Originally Posted by Barraind

As someone who has been doing math work on tanks (and crafters), you're going to need to put some sources for that, because its something that nobody else is talking about.

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https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...#gid=687481398

From the theoryjerkers themselves, some nice hard math.

"AP and tank AP added. Tank mastery nerfs damage, so it has different tiers."

Then also in the TJ discord, there have been multiple discussions and maths to show tank's AP is only 2/3 as strong as a DPS's with equivalent gear due to tank mastery adjusting how AP scales on tanks.

The STR on those accessories was roughly 51 at the end of SB, giving it 76 total for tanks who melded. Now those same accessories jumped 100 some odd STR to 171, so tanks even when melded gained roughly 500 STR literally the moment SHB dropped, but their dps hadn't changed from level 70 due to tank mastery changing how their AP was calculated by weakening the worth of STR and nerfing them by 20-30% some odd. My point in bringing that up is to show that tank damage -was- nerfed anyway, as tanks would be doing closer to 11k-12k dps if tank mastery wasn't affecting their AP.

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Originally Posted by Hasrat

In fairness, those two instances (and others right around them) are sorta poor examples due to the wide ilvl range.

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That is precisely why it isn't worth taking them into consideration when it comes to "balance" in low level dungeons. They're just screwed nomatter what.

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Originally Posted by TheRogueX

With 5.0 they've neutered low-level play so badly in order to fix high level play that I don't see how new people can think the game is fun.

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if they're new and low level, how do they know what they are missing?

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Originally Posted by Nora_of_Mira

if they're new and low level, how do they know what they are missing?

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They won't know what they're missing, but they could get bored of pressing the same few buttons repeatedly. I remember from my leveling experience that I didn't want to upgrade from THM to BLM because I lost my healing which gave me less to do in dungeons. Granted I shouldn't have been trying to heal people as a THM, but looking out for other players' HP while DPSing was more fun with such a simple rotation.