What do you feel is your job identity in flavour and gameplay?

Having being around since the start of 2.0 I have seen lots of changes both good and bad throughout the years to all the different jobs a player can play. I've played all of them at some time or another on my main or an alt and mainly just grumbled and changed to a different more fun job when one of them got gutted.

Sadly at this point as many threads have shown, the direction SE has taken over the years has been homogenizing, "balancing" or stripping critical and/or fun elements from each job to the point where we have had a tank shortage in 2.0 and 4.0, a melee shortage in 3.0 and a healer shortage in 5.0

Shadowbringers in particular has brought out a lot of disappointment with regards to job gameplay due to the sheer frustration and short sighted skill removal over the years boiling over. To address this, SE needs to go back to why heavensward's and some of the 4.0 jobs gameplay (such as brd and ast) was loved.

Every job had an identity, lore that matched, unique mechanics and abilities for the most part with only barest essentials cross class such as protect, swiftcast, foresight etc were needed. Buffs and debuffs for the most part were strong enough to feel like they had an impact. Individual but identical abilities (eg raise, ascend, resurrection) all looked different and related to their job


To this end, I would ask folks what they feel their job was at its highest point no matter when in the game's lifecycle in terms of feel (ie visuals, playstyle) and in terms of gameplay (abilities, potencies etc)



If we're lucky, perhaps we one of the community team picks this up when it comes to 6.0 and we see improvements

https://imgur.com/wCoXGvi.png

So far, I am absolutely satisfied with Red Mage. After all those years since this profession exists, in XIV, it's finally fully fleshed out. After 31 years!


Unlike before, where it was just a lazy and half-baked hackjob ("let's recycle WHM and BLM into one single character") with permanent back-and-forths in design (In some part, they had Dualcast, in some not), in visuals (the typical red-clad person with the plumed tricorne or .. whatever XI's supposed to look like) and sometimes totally vanishing even (how many FF parts skipped RDM?).

No, what I love about Red Mage in XIV in the current state: It's like a Rubic's Cube. No matter how I turn it, it all makes sense. There are weaknesses that have a proper compensation. Or strengths that have compensation weaknesses? See, it's perfect.

Which is weird, as these Jack of All Trade professions often tend to be very gimmicky where you are neither A nor B and the C part is just ridiculous so you rather play the "rea"l A or B profession. The whole mentoring by X'Rhun was fantastic and I love him as character. I am happy and glad Square Enix actually manages to keep the balance of the RDMs Pros and Cons. I could throw around numbers in DPS and Healing, about Rapier and Magic combat, about how it all makes sense. I could go on and on about this beatiful profession I ditched my GW2 characters over with no regret. But I did and will do in other threads.

Right now, I hope they do not touch RDM at all. No buffs, no removals, no nerfs.

https://imgur.com/TYjgNVp.png

I fell two times into an "identity crisis" as Scholar though. Right now, I still have an open thread in the healer section because I could not believe if it's me or the profession that suddenly changed. I got over that finally and enjoy to be your bespectacled Lalafell healer. However, the reason which led to my "Scholar midlife crisis" are there. I could fix the issues on my side, but still, Scholar is, unlike RDM, unfinished.

The stiff and unflexible Fairy bar is stupid and not worthy for such a huge company (and such a pricey game of this franchise). Square Enix does not even know what to do with it: Our Fairies are clunky, some skills imply connection/combos but are a dead-end and stuff like the Seraph sound nice but are so short and I don't know what's so special about it. Some skills outright feel me punished. For example, why would I want to send away my Fairy? It's not a "skill" which implies a "ace up our sleeves", but rather it's a trade. I trade in my fairy for aetherflow stacks. I know it's a bonus because of the added 20% potency, but still, if I lose my companion over that time, what is that?



You can see that cluelessness with the worst jobquest line ever. "Tomberry staring into a lake" for 15 quests straight. It's like a high school student wrote those as homework.

No need to talk about the DPS spells. "Art of War"? You mean the purple "Marylin Monroe Air Gust" (TM). A trashy DoT that lasts too short IMO - very annoying to babysit. Ugh.

In general though, I think Scholar is very cool. The whole idea of being a tactician and everything over the typical celestial shine White Magic is awesome. And some of the problems are a me-issue and my mediocre skill with this profession, but by just looking at the skills you can see that they are not interconnected well, which is a shame for a tactician.

When I'm dealing with the Shadowbringer story, I'm a Gunbreaker. For everything else, I revert back to a Ronin Samurai. Wielding a Gunblade or being a Samurai isn't something I can easily get in any other MMORPG.

There really has been no high point. Each expansion is a perpetual shift of pros vs cons. Along with this, some jobs become more enjoyable to play, while others become less so. Others stay right where they are at.

What I can say is that all evidence will point to which job I have enjoyed playing the most, regardless of changes with each expansion going back to ARR. If I had some kind of graph or chart to exhibit, it would show SCH by a very large margin over all other jobs with SAM coming in second - though SAM was obviously a 4.0 pickup. When the max level content comes out, SCH is the job I absolutely love taking into them, and this has not changed across all the expansions. Just now I really enjoy taking SAM into them as well.

It's a bit ironic, considering all of the changes SCH has gone through. These changes for the most part have usually dealt with their DPS skillset. Since I don't care much for healer DPS, I have been for the most part unaffected by these changes throughout the years. As a healer, SCH has continuously become more and more powerful in this regard. Alliance raids are what I enjoy the most, and I easily make full use of my healing kit in there.

While I can't really say I am having more fun than ever, I am also most certainly not having any less of it. Content that is stale to me is stale because of repetition, but taking a new job into content that has become stale is a great way to liven it up again.

FFXIV to me is more of a lifestyle now, kind of like another social activity such as going to the gym, a board night, league of some sort, etc. What I mean by that is when places like those have rule changes, or someone starts going that is kind of a jerkface and you're not too fond of, among other cumbersome/annoying situations you just learn to live and deal with it.

I'm currently not that happy with the battle system in general, and I have a ton of problems with it. That doesn't really stop me from PvE content though. I just focus on what I enjoy rather than what I don't and that tend to keep me going.

HW DRK was the peak of the job and SHB is the bottom on terms of identity, complexity and sinergy with his internal mechanics for me it use to have more combos in a unique way, more MP economy, better mechanics, dot management and a priority system for his MP usage all of that gone, i just can't call it DRK anymore when is a WAR with more oGCD.

AST had time extenders, different card effects, its lore ripped away. That was a big nail in the coffin for me because it was an amazing job back in stormblood. Those things need to return. If not the time extenders then the different card buffs, every card being damage has driven me away from the class. I'm not sure if they're trying to simplify it for the new players or to the raiders/parsers but it has to end. Everything doesn't have to be damage, people enjoy a engaging class than one that you can basically master within a few days.

I liked StB bard a lot, and now that our songs give buffs again I feel like it's still in a good spot gameplay wise.

HW bard was the worst... the cast bar thing was absolutely awful. I started like, the week HW came out so idk what things were like at 50 for ARR to speak to that.

I think ShB has my favorite artifact set, though they have fairly consistently stuck to the theme of "fancy outfit big hat" for pretty much all of our sets. ShB's just seems the most... practical? For a job centered on raising spirits and rallying allies in combat. Other than maybe the shorts for females. StB's was good too imo but the big bag on the side kinda ruined it for me - was kinda distracting to look at and looked awkward while running.

The single half-pant AF legs from HW still confuses me sometimes lmao

HW or late-SB Monk (both at ludicrous SkS stacking) are probably the classes/specs/jobs/whatever that have clicked most with me of any MMO's, in any expansion. There are some close competitors, but still... HW had a godly base gameplay loop, and late-SB's macro-rotation was fun as heck. It all fit me aesthetically, too, but even if it hadn't the gameplay would still have been irresistible.

As a tank main I would like to see some more individual flavour to suit their iconography and just what you would expect from them.

If all the jobs were The Avengers, WAR is the The Hulk. For the most part I think they nailed it, though just coming from a fantasy standpoint, while all the tanks are close in DPS I think WAR should be the highest, and I think we should have a passive giving us more HP. This job should just feel the most like "Wow, she has no chill."

PLD is the shield-bearing job and should have even better mitigation than it has now. A return to 40% reduction on Sentinel would be a good start. There are some scaling issues that makes blocking SUCK when synced downward. Maybe a formula that has a higher minimum block value and then itemization is applied. PLD should be the best MT IMO though like GNB it has its reasons for often being the OT when possible. At the very least HG is really, really good even with its long CD.

I don't really like how all the gap closers except WAR are the same. There is a lot of potential to make them unique. I think this kind of charge system of something you want to use on interval makes sense for GNB because it has this feeling of being really high-input, really technical. Though I'd like to see PLD and DRK changed. Maybe PLD has no damage on it, but can use it on enemies and allies alike (the latter blocking an attack for them). DRK could have one that has no CD, but a minimum range of activation if 10 yalms or something. Thus you can't use it in a rotation, but it's always available to get in close. I am only iffy on the DRK one because the animation is so cool so I like getting to use it as it is, too.

DRK and GNB are pretty close to what I would want in terms of imagined fantasy. Maybe Shadow Wall should restore MP when taking damage kind of representing their very begrudging image. In any event I'd want them to see where they can change stuff to bring back some flavour into the role, then balance them after to be about close to damage as they are now.

Paladin Identity:
- White Knight in Shining Armor saving the day when everyone else around fails n dies. Becomes stronger n faster when Allies fall
- Best Defense vs physical damage, most damage mitigation skills
- Weakest Tank in regard of active offense, extremely powerful on reactive offense via counterattacks through shield blocks and sword parries, shield block counters stun, sword parry counters are guarranteed critical direct hits that cause Weakness, reducing Enemy Damage temporarely.
- Effective Melee Interrupter
- Made to be the kind of last man standing, hard to defeat, good survivability to endure everything
- Hybrid Combat with physical skills and holy based magic spells/skills
- Tanking is based on Barriers, Shielding, Reflection, Invulnerability and Mitigation Effects based on your Defense or Block Rate Values.

Dark Knight Identity:
- Opposite of Paladin, uses two handed weapon for Cleave Attacks that are fast n powerful to erase trash mobs quickly, uses Dark Mark to enhance his Combat Skills.
- Best Defense as Tank vs Magical Damage, able to nullify and absorb Magic making Magic Usage close to a DRK useless.
- Most mobile Tank with alot of cleaving gap closers.
- Second most strongest Tank after Warrior in regard of Damage Dealng, best Offtank Option for Tank Switches, second most mitigation skills that are the most effectful n powerful after a Tank Switch and deal on losing Aggressivity to the MT high burst damage as synergy from Tank Switching.
- Effective Condition Dealer and Crowd Controler, Causes alot Blindness, Heaviness, Slow, Silence, Weakness and Vulnerability to debuff enemies, while stopping them from fighting effectively. Pushes enemies away if neccessary or pulls them together and binds them for easier AoE Nuking of trash.
- Tanking is based on Crowd Control, Debuffs, Conditions, Mobility and Mitigation based on Defense and Quickness Values
- Deals of all Tanks the most Damage over Time Effects that are in synergy n more powerful, so more debuffs n conditions the DRK causes.
- Uses Undeads as Meat Shields, created from defeated enemies that work as Barriers to them or Allies, when attached to them as Bone Cuirass, or instead uses them as Death Sacrifices, sending them out like Kamikaze Bombs to deal Aoe Damage that regens at the same time Ally MP by a portion of the dealt damage.

Just two examples of what Id like to see into Paladin and Dark Knight to diversify both more.

I'm a lore hound who favours casual/solo completion gameplay, so I would personally be quite happy if they sacrificed balance for the sake of matching the 'feel' of a job to its established lore. But I think that the homogenisation is an inevitable consequence of having such a finely-tuned balance for high-end content (which I don't do), and even then we end up with patches where different jobs are 'in' or 'out' of the current meta.

If there was a greater variety of solo and/or more-freeform content on offer, then having a huge amount of variation between jobs could make for some interesting gameplay. For better or worse, though, the game is focused on endgame raiding and I don't see that changing. Most of us who don't care about savage raids, Ex trials, etc. just content ourselves with dungeons, normal/24-man raids, beast tribes, hunts, etc. for our glam & other trinkets, and while we occasionally make some noise about wanting richer open-world content and the like, the raiding contingent of the community would be out there with torches and pitchforks if anything were taken away from raiding—and I don't really blame them, even if I don't sympathise.

All of that said, I'm pretty happy with the feel and 'flavour' of my MCH and GNB. They fit very well with my machina-obsessed kitty in allowing her to fulfil both DPS and Tanking roles. SCH suits her less well, except that she's a) a bookish sort, and b) she really hates primals, and so SCH sort of came along with the whole primal-slayin' SMN package. She'd still prefer some sort of machinistry-based healing though (E.g., something like a healing specced bounty hunter in SWtOR).

Summoner as "dreadwyrm mage" with the focus around Bahamut, building trances and eventually summoning it felt good lore-wise to me. Maybe it's not what people expect "a summoner" to be, but it works as its own concept, and (combined with the job story's tendency to sit close to the MSQ) seems appropriate to be the class for my main character. A powerful mage with a special link to dragons, an important force in the overall story - it particularly made the climax of Heavensward and Dragonsong feel very significant.

I don't like how the core focus on Bahamut been pushed aside to make way for Phoenix - I know that has its own significance but it divides the previous focus of the job and what made it main-character-ideal to me, while creating a big new aspect with no direct story explanation. It's been over two expansions since we saw Phoenix; why are we suddenly summoning it now?

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Summoner as "dreadwyrm mage" with the focus around Bahamut, building trances and eventually summoning it felt good lore-wise to me. Maybe it's not what people expect "a summoner" to be, but it works as it's own concept, and (combined with the job story's tendency to sit close to the MSQ) seems appropriate to be the class for my main character. A powerful mage with a special link to dragons, an important force in the overall story - it particularly made the climax of Heavensward and Dragonsong feel very significant.

I don't like how the core focus on Bahamut been pushed aside to make way for Phoenix - I know that has its own significance but it divides the previous focus of the job and what made it main-character-ideal to me, while creating a big new aspect with no direct story explanation. It's been over two expansions since we saw Phoenix; why are we suddenly summoning it now?

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A fate which has befallen many of the jobs, I fear. All these shiny new ultimate abilities, and not a lick of lore to account for them.

Demi-Phoenix makes even less sense if you've never completed the Binding Coils and never saw Phoenix in the first place. Bahamut at least got the explanation of causing a planet-wide Calamity to explain how everyone got washed in his aether.

Scholar was my main. But I feel much of what I loved about being one has been stripped from it. I was a Scholar main in Final Fantasy XI too, where they were considered military tacticians and their gameplay was versatile and adaptable to match a strategic feel. When I saw this identity port over into FFXIV's version, I was hyped. Once I got to play Scholar, it was very different to FFXI Scholar and to any healer role I played before and I loved it. It was a well designed job that felt good to play on and I like what they did with it and the fact it's nothing like FFXI's SCH was no issue what-so-ever, because it still managed to convey a tactician but in a wholly different way.

Scholar was a calculated and planned healer in that much of the time you had to be proactive and given its overall healing output was low you had to find ways to make up for it. Not only that, but faeries and damage mitigation became a part of this iteration of Scholar's identity. In order to make up for my lack of overall healing I had to learn to micromanage and better utilise my faeries and that felt good.

And my faerie choice would change depending on the fight or dungeon, so it felt meaningful on who I'd pick. And mitigation back then wasn't just about shielding allies, but in things like trash pulls the Scholar DPS rotation applied status effects that somewhat impaired foes (kinda like Blue Mage has now, though Blue Mage obvious has more) and that helped, even if it could have been better. And the way Scholar felt to DPS was that it was more about weaving DoT's than nuking (WHM was more about the nukes). The weaving of DoT's was a nice throwback to the gameplay of FFXI's SCH in that when I healed I'd weave in my helix spells, which were strong elemental DoT's. Though these DoT's in XIV weren't elemental and is not like-for-like (and I wouldn't expect it to be because they're 2 completely different games) but how it was done felt complimentary to the role and it flowed.

Heavensward threw in a couple of extra niceties to add to its tactical aesthetic through Emergency Tactics and Deployment Tactics and in Stormblood through Excogitation.

But due to the bloat of healer spells and how well healers are healing, a lot of what Scholar offered as a healer feels meaningless.
Faerie choice is now meaningless.
Seraph would be better if there was less healing bloat.
Damage mitigation from DPS spells is long gone. And would be meaningless due to healer bloat.
The DoT Mage Element is gone.
And whilst the DPS rotation was somewhat of a saving grace in SB, that's now gone.
The job feels like a husk of what it was like to play when I started, despite having a plethora of nice healing skills.


BLU, ticks more of those boxes than SCH now:
Its healing spells are minimum. No bloat really, probably could do with 1 or 2 more healing spells if anything (it isn't an issue for me, but it might be for somebody else). I have more of a healing focus with a fraction of the spells. Though I am more planned than I am on SCH, it sits in the middle of old WHM and old SCH in this respect.
It has damage mitigation through the enfeeblements it applies, and is better at it than SCH was.
It has more DoT's available than Scholar currently does. So it does the DoT Mage element better.
It has a more varied downtime, which SCH used to have, which I am able to work in as a weave (as opposed to creating downtime to spam DPS moves)
My AoE's feel more impactful than Art of War ever will and I don't even mean in numbers.


As a result, I'm enjoying healing as a Blue Mage way more. And I think there are a few lessons to be learned from it.
- Less can be more when it comes to healing spells when the content isn't pushing you for it.
- More to do in your down time is better
- There's no harm in putting status effects on trash mobs again or even improving on it.
- Art of War needs to feel better to use

I get they've probably lowered the skill floor to make it more accessible, so just give me a higher skill ceiling so I'm not bored and I figure that can be done with our downtime.

However, I feel the better option for accessibility is to create a healer job that's more accessible not by gutting the existing ones. They've not done this to DPS jobs, RDM is very accessible because it's a small, simple and straight forward rotation, but SMN has a long and complicated rotation that makes it less accessible to less experienced players. So adding jobs that are more accessible works because they've already done it.

But as I've put in the healer forums before. I'm willing to compromise at: make our down time interesting.

Sadly, today we have in forum this behavior for <insert any job>:
if (doesn't dps enough) then (is trash-talked because low dps) else (is trash-talked because made up just for raiders)

I remember during storm blood I would hear yoshi p talking about a "pure healer" fantasy a lot in live letters, I would just shrug and say well that's white mage and they can do whatever they want i guess. But for me, my scholar was a combat medic, and my dot's were a big part of that. Eos was never important to me in that fantasy i could leave her on auto and know she would generally be helpful at least, a good assistant, but keeping my people alive was my job. That all ended in shadow bringers, there was such a disconnect I just couldn't enjoy my main job anymore. All my dot's gone, a bumbling fairy of an assistant who wont take initiative and drags her wings when given an order, then seraph... where the hell did you even come from and why are you in my toolkit?
Now i dont think its unfair to have to take more direct control of the fairies but its current form I'd frankly lose the passive embrace to just let them pop in and out of existence as part of a spell animation and work as i need them to. But these are the primary reasons i fell out of love with scholar.

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Originally Posted by Aurturia

I remember during storm blood I would hear yoshi p talking about a "pure healer" fantasy a lot in live letters, I would just shrug and say well that's white mage and they can do whatever they want i guess. But for me, my scholar was a combat medic, and my dot's were a big part of that. Eos was never important to me in that fantasy i could leave her on auto and know she would generally be helpful at least, a good assistant, but keeping my people alive was my job. That all ended in shadow bringers, there was such a disconnect I just couldn't enjoy my main job anymore. All my dot's gone, a bumbling fairy of an assistant who wont take initiative and drags her wings when given an order, then seraph... where the hell did you even come from and why are you in my toolkit?
Now i dont think its unfair to have to take more direct control of the fairies but its current form I'd frankly lose the passive embrace to just let them pop in and out of existence as part of a spell animation and work as i need them to. But these are the primary reasons i fell out of love with scholar.

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As far as I understood, WHM's hated that. They're a "pure" healer, but the game's mechanics and how healers are designed makes such a role meaningless. WHM's pure healing has no advantage over SCH's or AST's pure healing, although WHM can technically do more pure healing.

They designed the game around healers contributing via healing and DPS (and support with AST) and I've always found is appropriate because I don't recall any Final Fantasy where "pure healer" was ever a concept, even in Final Fantasy titles where you had job systems, your White Mage would still have other ways to contribute. You had stuff more heal orientated, say if you were to compare WHM and RDM. But this concept works in XIV and now that the DPS/Support aspect is dull and the healing spells bloated it's really noticeable.

And in fairness, all healer jobs are now well equipped to be pure healers. I think the healing kits for all 3 are great. I just don't think they're appropriate for the content we've got and how the game's encounters are designed.

It's really frustrating because healers in this game used to be well designed and appropriate for the game's content and really fun to play.

Warrior - I break big rocks.

I joined sometime around 2.x as well. And back then, this is how people categorised the classes at the time:
SCH - The DPS/saboteur/shield healer type. For players who wanted more of a challenge, they would play this class. There was pet management, dot management, and basically a need-to-know the content or be a darn good guesser. (They also started to earn a rep as lazy healers at some point because a lot of SCHs stopped healing and mostly let their fairy do the work while they DPSd XDD But that was a short period)

WHM - The BIG reactive healer, and also the more newb-friendly healer. Reactive healing is generally easier than preventive (shielding) healing because you don't need to know the content. Back then WHM also actually used repose during dungeons to help crowd control a little bit while DPS and tank focused on one monster at a time.

DRG - Was still known as "LOL Dragoon" back then (don't know if it still is) thanks to FFXI, I think? But even still, if it was "played right," it was a really good class but supposedly it was often not played well and considered one of the more difficult DPS classes at the time. it was unofficially regarded as an off-tank because it was among the least squishiest of the DPS. If the tank went down, the DRG could actually use an aggro skill to attract the mobs to him (I think they had some cross skills with MRD because back then you needed to level a secondary class to to 15 to get your job crystal; DRG was comprised of LNC (30) and MRD (15)), hold his own for a few seconds, until the tank went back up, but they definitely weren't as beefy as an actual tank so doing that could be a bit of a challenge. Back then, the pulls (except in DD) were small. If it was a big pull, they definitely wouldn't have lasted, I don't think.

PLD Was considered the "defence/shield" tank. I never played it so I don't know much about it, tbh. I think it might have actually been considered the harder of the two (at the time) tanks because keeping aggro could be difficult if you didn't play the class well. If played well, they could totally survive an ultimate attack from a primal thanks to their defence prowess. I saw it a couple times and was blown away.

WAR Was considered the "BIG HP" tank. They would pretty much drop all (or most) of their distribution in the VIT slot. So, they were generally good at damage absorption cuz they had so much HP. This one had a much easier time getting aggro and keeping aggro. So, it might have been more newb-friendly in terms of learning to tank but I honestly don't know. But I generally liked healing these guys cuz I never... stole aggro from them as either DPS or healer. They were great.

That's about all I remember (I was in an FC full of tanks and healers. XD I was the only DPS(DRG)/Healer at the time until uhm... Ninja came out, then we had a ninja.)

For current classes and a more up-to-date view on them:
AST The synergist and adaptive healer. It was meant to be the most flexible healer and that's why we had RNG and two sects. I think it was originally intended to be another DPS healer to counterpart DRK, the newly released DPS tank. Originally, the diurnal sect had weaker heals in favour of speed spell (primarily DPS spells, I think) + regen, and nocturnal sect had slower spell speed in favour of bigger heals with shields. But the cards were virtually always the same. I'm pretty sure they fixed them up a couple times to make them more useful in the beginning, but after that I'm pretty sure they didn't touch them again. AST never had a great healing or DPS rotation. But what made it not boring was the fact that its cards were very easy to use, you could use them often, and they all had different effects, and it had other support skills like time dilation, and celestial opposition (stun version), etc. (Why WHM got to keep their stun but not us, I will never know.) Sure, a Balance might've been good for a DPS check, but so was Arrow (i.e. swift/haste), or spear (for critical hits), or virtually anything. Pretty much everything was usable. :| That, and, using the enhanced versions were great as well. I would classify SCH as possibly the hardest, AST as the middle ground, and WHM as the easiest of the healers and I thinkt hey should've stayed that way.

BRD Was the support (and was surprisingly strategic, like AST). It not only supported fellow DPS through some songs, but it also helped healers with at least one particular song combo, and tanks with other support skills like Palisade. So, depending on CD, you could totally use BRD strategically. (In fact, one time in a level 70 dng, we had a tank who wasn't using any of his cooldowns and the party mistook my CD [palisade] as his own. XD) I also liked that I could help with MP regeneration and TP regeneration (though I will never like really bad healers who spam Holy over and over, lose all their MP, get themselves in a bind and go "HELLO, BRD, MP SONG PLZ." "Sorry, bro, but I'm still on CD http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/i...lies/smile.png /using it obsessively because someone keeps running out of MP every few seconds." XD It kind of feels that DNC took away some of its identity, but at the same time I think 4.0 BRD and DNC are different enough.

I do play DRK (solo and with friends), but I don't know it and current PLD or WAR well enough to comment on how it is.

CONCLUSION In most MMOs, they had star ratings from one class to the next showing how difficult they were. Players could opt for the easier class(es) or the harder one(s). I easily think SE could have done that with all the classes here to keep their integrity instead of homogenising them. If a newb feels uncomfortable biting off more than they can chew, they can start off with an intentionally easier class and move on to try harder ones later if they wanted to (the class system in this game is really friendly for that).

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Originally Posted by MitsukiKimura

Everything doesn't have to be damage, people enjoy a engaging class than one that you can basically master within a few days.

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Honestly, I think the biggest problem has more to do with this compulsion to release new job abilities every expansion than anything else. Everything they add is another button, and every new button (usually) has to find its way onto our hot bars SOMEWHERE. Too many buttons and we can't realistically do that. So they have to par things down so we can. That means getting rid of some things to make room and then balancing out the rest so the job still functions more or less as intended. Even more irritating is when they have to nerf existing abilities because of the new ones so the job in question isn't overpowered unfairly to the rest.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for having new abilities and skills. But honestly, I would have been perfectly happy for them to have merely buffed SAM's potencies to ShB level difficulty and spent my entire time leveling unlocking passive traits (like better kenki generation or something) and building up to unlocking one or two new skills instead of the... what... five or so we got?

I would have much preferred a quest driven journey to find ancient scrolls (or something) specifically so I could unlock Hissatsu:Senei and Tsubame-gaeshi or Iikishoten or whatever and have THAT be the sum total of my new abilities for ShB instead of going through the gyrations we have because they seem to have this fear that if they don't give us brand new abilities every other level we'll riot or something.

No, build up some excitement for the one or two new abilities we're going to get, and make the learning of them both a challenge and organic and we'll be fine guys. Really. Gutting Hagakure was unnecessary. Adding Ikishoten was unnecessary. Changing meditate was largely unnecessary (though Shoha is nice). We would have been fine with a questline to translate new moves to get our high damage single target hit and our double execute as long as the journey was interesting.

And I use SAM as an example simply because it's my main, but I see it on every job. Except where there are actual problems playing and there is a noticeable struggle for a particular job to do a thing it's meant to... we don't have to re-invent the wheel every expansion and then go back and try to fix it.

Monk. Because it's the only class that allows you to mix up different skills. Each form has 3 different attacks.

Has the best animations and the best melee LB3

Standing up to a dragon wearing heavily clad armour is a cool thing but square up punching a god in the jaw is a much cooler thing.

Not gonna say. Don't wanna trigger people here for not feeling the same way they do. Also, something is wrong with me.

Speaking of my favorite jobs:

BRD: Definitely Stormblood was the peak for this job. The gutting of its utility and removal of DoT management/manipulation really drove me away from the job—and I started FFXIV on BRD. I EVEN ENJOYED BOWMAGE DESPITE IT BEING UNIVERSALLY HATED. But I really dislike Shadowbringers BRD. Even the return of the song effects didn’t salvage it for me. I miss Foe’s and manipulating its management with Refresh. I miss having things like Palisade to assist my tanks. Nature’s Minne is still good; but idk. The job has just felt empty to me since ShB dropped.

DRK: Heavensward DRK was the best iteration of the job. I like some of the things introduced in Shadowbringers (I love Living Shadow because I can head-canon my character fighting alongside her Darkside every 2 minutes for a little bit), but I wish we could return some of the stuff in Heavensward. I miss having a second combo to maintain (OG Delirium); I miss the MP management OG Darkside gave you. I MISS SCOURGE. I miss when Salted Earth wasn’t a lul skill, and I really miss DA+Abyssal Drain in large dungeon pulls. Original Reprisal animation was also the best.

AST: Stormblood. While the devs needed to address Balance, I loved AST in Stormblood. 3.3 HW AST was good, too (before they broke Balance). The new card system killed my love for the job. I can only really enjoy it now if I basically ignore that job mechanic...which isn’t right lol. I miss the variety in the Arcana; I miss the Time Mage aspects of the job. I also miss HW AST’s MP economy but I’d take SB AST over ShB AST with HW MP.

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Originally Posted by purgatori

But I think that the homogenisation is an inevitable consequence of having such a finely-tuned balance for high-end content (which I don't do), and even then we end up with patches where different jobs are 'in' or 'out' of the current meta.

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That's my main gripe with the game. Everything gets sacrificed on the alter or end game only for the raiders to complain anyway.

Now we're not even allowed to have half-way interesting buffs anymore unless its DEEPS (I main AST; yes, I'm bitter),
all tanks feel the same... the list goes on.

And even if they revert back a little we most like have to wait till 6.0 to see it. Honestly, I'm quite bored with the direction SE are taking.

I feel like BLM suits me best, even though I've never actually played it. I tend towards "move as little as possible while slinging as many spells as possible" which I've heard is the best way to play BLM anyway.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

That's my main gripe with the game. Everything gets sacrificed on the alter or end game only for the raiders to complain anyway.

Now we're not even allowed to have half-way interesting buffs anymore unless its DEEPS (I main AST; yes, I'm bitter),
all tanks feel the same... the list goes on.

And even if they revert back a little we most like have to wait till 6.0 to see it. Honestly, I'm quite bored with the direction SE are taking.

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I'm in the same boat. I don't like the homogenisation, whilst there are other ways to balance, homogenisation is an easier to manage way of doing it. But I don't think it has to be that way.

But I'm just starting to feel they need to do to high end raids what they did to PvP. Have a separate balance. You have your normal kit, your raid kit and your PvP kit. Your raid kit is where SE focuses balance more tightly, whereas other content, it can be less tight. IMO Blue Mage is proving that day-to-day non-competitive content doesn't need to be well balanced. And old content doesn't need to be well balanced either. It just has to be achievable.

IMO it's still not ideal, but at least they have a separation of concerns and have to worry less about whether a change that benefits raid content doesn't negatively impact non-raid content. It worked out quite nicely for PvP, because it has made the PvP experience feel more streamlined.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

That's my main gripe with the game. Everything gets sacrificed on the alter or end game only for the raiders to complain anyway.

Now we're not even allowed to have half-way interesting buffs anymore unless its DEEPS (I main AST; yes, I'm bitter),
all tanks feel the same... the list goes on.

And even if they revert back a little we most like have to wait till 6.0 to see it. Honestly, I'm quite bored with the direction SE are taking.

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Except jobs aren’t homogenized/simplified for the raiders. They’re simplified for the lowest common denominator in this game. The developers outright said BRD was being simplified in ShB to close the gap between top tier BRDs and lower tier ones. Heck, they said Straight Shot was removed because people had trouble keeping the buff up.

I’d say most raiders aren’t happy with how simple jobs have become. I know the top tier BRDs weren’t really fans of the ShB changes when they were announced. And I don’t think I need to explain the issues people (including raiders) have with healers to an AST main.

The focus on buffs and damage is simply a byproduct of content design. The devs have made content basically focus on damage only—because what else is there to focus on? Tanking/Aggro is a joke; healing is a joke; mitigative tools are so pervasive there’s usually overlap when there’s not outright overkill because they’re also really strong—so damage is what the community pushes.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Rasikko

Not gonna say. Don't wanna trigger people here for not feeling the same way they do. Also, something is wrong with me.

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I know what you're upset about but you don't need validation on the forums to enjoy your class

Anyways yeah I felt Scholars identity was in poisons and poison cleansing but they took away Selenes aoe cleanse and got rid of all of our dots, so I feel like that class doesn't really have an identity anymore. Right now it feels like fairy god-summoner with the pretty fairy that is janky to control. And then there's like the tech stuff like the missiles and new animation for bio? Scholar feels like it doesn't know what it wants to be anymore and hey that makes me sad

Level 60 Heavensward Scholar > Level 70 Stormblood Scholar > Level 80 Shadowbringers Scholar < Blue Mage 5.15 (greater than/less than, not arrows)

I was very set as Scholar from when I was leveling, even around level 30-40 onward in Heavensward. With the fondest of memories in Heavensward, and the first thing I normally seem to think of is being in Sohm Al (hard). There was so much in ways to expand, progress, and learn with all the spells and abilities I had. Even years later I could push further. Right now I don't really play it, but not all because of the job, and not really because of any other level 80 job. Although I haven't been into the current dungeons, trials, etc. as much as previous equivalents, at least at a longer term, the current state of the job doesn't have me wanting to play like I used to really want to play it. But with 5.15 Blue Mage, at least in this short term (within the last week), I've felt like I've found a serious alternative that in some ways really offers me what current Scholar doesn't but used to

I seem to favorably choose Melee DPS. While I do have tank envy, with the cool tank glamours I seem to suffer from brain drain when I play as one. I'll forget to negate a tank buster, or blow all my cooldowns because the healer doesnt' heal very much and the DPS are killing things too slow so I'm panicking at the verge of death every pull lol. After an instance I'm left a touch agitated afterwards.

There are times where I'll try to main something else each patch, but keep falling back to Samurai. Maybe because I really like hitting high damage. For a while I was getting pretty good with DRG, but I like solo "selfish" jobs where I can just focus on output rather than worrying about everyone else... it's probably why I'm more relaxed playing it. MNK used to be this way, but it's gotten too fast paced for my liking now.

I gave DNC a good go since 5.0. And still really enjoy it. But I missed having RDM as my main. As RDM, I really enjoy the range and still being able to mix in some melee combos. I also really enjoy having the knowledge that I can help raise and semi heal in an emergency if needed.
I never enjoyed having that responsibility in other mmos, so it has been an interesting twist for me personally.

Summoner has been a mixed bag over the years. I can't remember much of 2.0 anymore, but all I know that's when Summoner was creatively bankrupt. The summons weren't the focal point, but the DoTs. It was incredibly weird and disliked.

Heavensward comes along, and it's when I started to really enjoy it. The DoTs are still the main focus unfortunately, but I really liked managing Aethertrail, Dreadwyrm Trance and the amount of ogcds it had compared to BLM (which had none). It gave the job the depth and diversity it needed. Still, I was hoping it focused less on DoTs and more on summons.

Stormblood Summoner did put more focus on the Trance/Summons than the DoTs, problem is...a lot of its changes were problematic at launch. A lot of restrictions/locking, it felt super clunky and it had high risks. 4.1 comes in and brings arguably the best and most loved iteration of Summoner so far. It became the most mobile caster (with a lot of instant cast spells) and most flexible DPS in the game. It still had issues but this was the Summoner I'm most fond of. I really loved Demi Bahamut and hoped they moved further with the idea.

I got my wish since Shadowbringers Summoner brings us Demi-Phoenix, which is basically just Demi-Bahamut but the concept improved further. I like the idea of a summon creating an aura effect and also changing your own spells themed to said summon. I hope they do the same thing for Bahamut soon. History repeats itself though because they rework the job in the worst way possible. It was laughably weak, lost mobility, lost its flexibility, it was clunky, bloated with buttons, its mechanics not in sync with each other and not friendly to higher latency, then Fester-Ruins. I didn't think it was that terrible after getting used to it, but I'm so glad they fixed it in 5.1. It's incredibly more mobile now than before, the summons do feel impactful and DoTs are less of a problem. Still, the job has a long way to go to feel "perfect" to me.

It's probably one of the most controversial jobs in the game since it doesn't know what it really wants to be. Should it focus on DoTs? Should it focus on pets/Egi's? Should it focus on Trance/Demi's? It evolved so much that even the community is at a divide. Personally how I see it, there's a big focus on instant spells and ogcds on Summoner. That's what's so enjoyable about it for me and they should keep it like that. I'm one of the crowd that prefers Demi's over Egi's and hope they scrap Egi's for good. How they designed Demi-Phoenix makes me wish they applied the same concept for each summon.

I can't really decide which is my favorite out of 4.1 and 5.1. 4.1 gave it more depth, flexibility and rewarded you for planning smart, but 5.1 made it feel more satisfying to play with all of the instant casts and mobility it gives you. I hope in the future they just merge what makes both iterations so good.

Bard: It's not really as fun as it was in the previous expansion, and the closest thing to where it's direction was going towards in Stormblood was basically the starlight choir (HM) minigame and rhythm games due to just the dynamic affect that crit had on its proc-rates. And, there was also this big negative of not incorporating better song effects and the ways it's songs support the party, and instead they outright changed it into a selfish DPS class, which was false advertising

Astrologian: Ugh, the card system is just so not controller friendly at all, and have very little value considering all of the effort in eight player content. Plus, it was really weak at launch, and they removed most of it's QOL abilities like bole, mp regen, stun, and protect, which just felt really horrible to heal through since most tanks are not like Thancred and more like healing wet tissue paper. Situationally, AST was super flexible, but is now totally focused on the raid scene but take way too much effort and upkeep to remain viable to validate the amount of work and inputs over the other two healers

Overall: Both jobs basically ignored their lore, and were redesigned without care for certain, ?minutia?, like the feel of the job and its systems in motion in both its parts and as a whole

mnk go fast

I can't see myself "main"-ing any roll but PLD. I don't 100% feel like a golden-boy, pious Paladin though. I feel like a former DRK who used to be edgy and angry all the time in his youth, but is now too old and tired to care about any of that anymore. SO maybe I'm just the pessimistic, sarcastic, grizzled veteran, former-DRK PLD.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by MrKusakabe

https://imgur.com/wCoXGvi.png

So far, I am absolutely satisfied with Red Mage. After all those years since this profession exists, in XIV, it's finally fully fleshed out. After 31 years!


Unlike before, where it was just a lazy and half-baked hackjob ("let's recycle WHM and BLM into one single character") with permanent back-and-forths in design (In some part, they had Dualcast, in some not), in visuals (the typical red-clad person with the plumed tricorne or .. whatever XI's supposed to look like) and sometimes totally vanishing even (how many FF parts skipped RDM?).

No, what I love about Red Mage in XIV in the current state: It's like a Rubic's Cube. No matter how I turn it, it all makes sense. There are weaknesses that have a proper compensation. Or strengths that have compensation weaknesses? See, it's perfect.



Right now, I hope they do not touch RDM at all. No buffs, no removals, no nerfs.

https://imgur.com/TYjgNVp.png

I fell two times into an "identity crisis" as Scholar though. Right now, I still have an open thread in the healer section because I could not believe if it's me or the profession that suddenly changed. I got over that finally and enjoy to be your bespectacled Lalafell healer. However, the reason which led to my "Scholar midlife crisis" are there. I could fix the issues on my side, but still, Scholar is, unlike RDM, unfinished.





You can see that cluelessness with the worst jobquest line ever. "Tomberry staring into a lake" for 15 quests straight. It's like a high school student wrote those as homework.

No need to talk about the DPS spells. "Art of War"? You mean the purple "Marylin Monroe Air Gust" (TM). A trashy DoT that lasts too short IMO - very annoying to babysit. Ugh.

.

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Must you bold and font change every single post you make? Do you think it makes your posts extra special or something?

I have a tendency to choose support jobs. DNC, BRD, SCH, DRK...I do my best work when I'm able to kill things while helping the party.

BRD, AST and WAR felt to me like they reached the peak in SB. BRD had all these amazing song support that actually won me over ( I had been disgruntled with with my preconceptions that, starting from an archer, I'm now a support).

I loved AST cuz I clearly remembered this job being probably the only one in SB where it rewarded you properly for remembering what each card did. Took me weeks to memorize them to the fullest.

WAR felt like this invincible tank that made stance dancing hella fun.



Now when it comes to what I main typically, I do play tank but with this expansion recently, I find myself just about dabbling in everything. Well, everything except healer. I can completely understand why it's always in need in the roulette duty page (at least on my DC). I'm still kicking myself in the head for not trying out MCH first. It's stupidly fun to play and I can't help but say it's probably the best goddamn reworked job. At the risk of sounding like IGN, it feels like your playing a MCH. My sincerest hope in the next expansion is keep expand on the job and not touch anything right now. I'd like see MCH using electrical nets as traps or lasers, and pretty much a wide assortment of machines. Dancer is kinda fun but I'm still not seeing why BRD had to be stripped of what made it good to make DNC relevant. Feels like poor design and lazy choices imo. WAR is just...plain and DRK's highlight is Fell Cleaving copy.


I could go on but I feel like I'd go into a rant and I just don't feel like voicing for the millionth time what everyone else said.