Group-DPS buffs aren't real "Utility" or "Support"

They are superficial buffs to make you feel like you're buffing the group when they're really just their to offset your own low DPS. Red Mage's Vercure and Raising capabilities are a much better example of what support and utility is. Dancer and Bard's "DPS" songs and dances are not. Monk's Mantra ability is. I miss NIN's aggro tools a bit. They were fun. Trick Attack's effect is not.

These DPS-focused "support" and "utility" skills are boring and just keep the jobs feeling like DPS bots performing a rotation ad nauseum. I main and prefer DPS classes and don't understand why they can't give them 1 or 2 more hybrid-style abilities, or why they undertune the ones that do have them already. That way SE don't have to worry so much about a DPS job being able to do too much and nerfing a job's performance, because everyone will have their own unique tools (nothing drastic). It's kind of hard for me to explain it.

It's kind of the same issue I had back in HW when there were fewer movement skills to use with jobs. They were FUN and we needed more of them, and now that we do have more of them, lo and behold it feels great! No DPS having a skill like Vercure was also something I felt lacking in HW, people cried "OP!" at the suggestion on these forums (people here are so unopen to these ideas I swear), and then once again they added it when they brought Red Mage on board and it's been GREAT.

THIS is why I think they need to focus more on this kind of support/utility. Rather than just "muh deeps in savage!", I don't just want to play a role I want to play a job. I main a job because I love that particular class. I don't want to job-hop all the time. There's a lot more content than endgame raids. Let the jobs do more. Otherwise what's the point of even having a job system?

Even BLU could have been a normal job in the game with minimal sacrifices if they allowed jobs to be more varied to begin with. White Wind could've soaked half your MP to cast. Make bosses immune to death. Adjust their Kamikaze combo. Etc.

They just didn't want to make their jobs a little harder despite how much money this game makes. And they continue balancing these things anyway so that point is kind of moot.

ANYWAY. I needed to get this off my chest because it's the only thing that annoys the hell out of me in this game after so many years of playing. I don't care if you disagree.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by GavynG

THIS is why I think they need to focus more on this kind of support/utility. Rather than just "muh deeps in savage!", I don't just want to play a role I want to play a job. I main a job because I love that particular class. I don't want to job-hop all the time. There's a lot more content than endgame raids. Let the jobs do more. Otherwise what's the point of even having a job system?

---

The thing is, this is really the only place where such abilities would make a difference, and they can't give us abilities that would make a difference in Savage because then the community mindset would be to prioritize the job that has the difference-making ability to the exclusion of others when given a choice.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rongway

The thing is, this is really the only place where such abilities would make a difference, and they can't give us abilities that would make a difference in Savage because then the community mindset would be to prioritize the job that has the difference-making ability to the exclusion of others when given a choice.

---

I mean, this pretty much nails the issue with that. Normal content is under tuned so much to be accessible to the most people possible. As a result, support skills like Monk's Mantra are nice to have, but if it's make or break then there are a lot of other issues that need to be dealt with.

Also, you're creating a really superficial definition of support, things that increase DPS are definitely support skills; more importantly, support skills which people will ALWAYS be happy to see at any time during any combat at any point in progression.

It definitely would be nice to see Peloton when cast in combat give a 5s run buff and start a 1m cooldown or something. That would be another nice support skill.

Overall though, other than that, "support skills" (even the stuff you mention) is just "Make Good Numbers Bigger" and/or "Make Bad Numbers Smaller." In that instance, there's no difference between the Dancer/Bard buffs and Monk's Mantra.

Edit: Also Also, if you're not careful with support/utility skills, you may end up taking a class and making it their identity (e.g. Rez Mage) and/or requiring the class to be there in certain circumstances. In general, support/utility balance lately has been more about rewarding people for bringing different classes for different ways of buffing DPS. For example, a crit buff on top of a +damage buff on top of a received damage debuff on the boss is exponentially better than 2-3 +damage buffs.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rongway

The thing is, this is really the only place where such abilities would make a difference, and they can't give us abilities that would make a difference in Savage because then the community mindset would be to prioritize the job that has the difference-making ability to the exclusion of others when given a choice.

---

A primary example being Ninja. Sure, Trick Attack played a huge role in its meta status through Heavensward and Stormblood but Shadewalker and Smokescreen cannot be underplayed. If you weren't running Warrior, it was downright necessary to bring Ninja otherwise whichever tank pulled needed to be in tank stance. Even Warrior could struggle for aggro off an overly aggressive White Mage or Bard in general. So when you factor in both that utility and Trick, why would anyone bring Monk or Samurai? They often didn't.

If I remember correctly, FFXIV went through the usual design progression:

1. Dev decides DPS with utlility should have lower dps.
2. Progression raiders declare utility DPS garbage. Utility DPS player complains.
3. Devs try to make utility DPS useful to progression, hence utility becomes raid damage buffs.

And to ensure #3, devs have also designed all content to never require any utility. Which means there's no point designing utility skills and abilities.

This is an old debate, and FFXIV clearly chooses to do away with utility to streamline content design and simplify job balance (not in terms of dps potential but in terms of the desirability of each job).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by GavynG

Red Mage's Vercure and Raising capabilities are a much better example of what support and utility is.
[...]
I main and prefer DPS classes and don't understand why they can't give them 1 or 2 more hybrid-style abilities, or why they undertune the ones that do have them already.

---

Like what?
Other than giving DPS heals and raises, what kind of support moves do you think this game could/should support?
And what are these undertuned support moves you referenced?

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LeonKeyh

Also, you're creating a really superficial definition of support, things that increase DPS are definitely support skills; more importantly, support skills which people will ALWAYS be happy to see at any time during any combat at any point in progression.

---

Thank you for saying it. DPS damage boosting is utility, and some of us very much enjoy boosting others numbers. I know sure as hell that a big reason why I'm not happy with bard right now if the loss of Foe's requiem, with nothing provided to make up for it's removal.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Zfz

If I remember correctly, FFXIV went through the usual design progression:

1. Dev decides DPS with utlility should have lower dps.
2. Progression raiders declare utility DPS garbage. Utility DPS player complains.
3. Devs try to make utility DPS useful to progression, hence utility becomes raid damage buffs.

And to ensure #3, devs have also designed all content to never require any utility. Which means there's no point designing utility skills and abilities.

This is an old debate, and FFXIV clearly chooses to do away with utility to streamline content design and simplify job balance (not in terms of dps potential but in terms of the desirability of each job).

---

I remember a different story. Since ARR, utility dps have always outperformed selfish dps and this was especially true during HW. Actually this extended to healers, after the initial round of AST buffs. It wasn't until ShB that selfish jobs were tuned properly. Unless you were referring to 1.0, but I'd say that was a completely different game.

At the end of the day, utility is fine as a concept, however the way ffxiv implemented it was problematic because utility jobs used to put selfish jobs to shame in a decently coordinated party in terms of total damage, which is the thing that matters the most in this game by design.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by GavynG

OP.

---

This is a part of why so many people complain about homogenization and have the opinion every job has lost its identity and feels the same to play..

The only think that separates job a from job b most of the time is the weapon they use which then makes them ultimately boring.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rongway

The thing is, this is really the only place where such abilities would make a difference, and they can't give us abilities that would make a difference in Savage because then the community mindset would be to prioritize the job that has the difference-making ability to the exclusion of others when given a choice.

---

From experience the community doesn't do this often, the attitude even in Savage being "play the class you enjoy, you'll perform better than trying to bring the top meta class". RDM as an example is perfectly fine, having Raise, Vercure and decent dps yet BLM having 0 utility still sees a lot of play too. As does WHM despite no shields or raid buffs. The community does get stuck into weird notions like "2 melee 2 ranged", "Always Noct AST with WHM" or "no doubles" even when they don't need lb3, but they're generally fine on class choice.

The fear of the community mindset shouldn't hinder class design. Players really aren't that bad. Sure some people exclude classes, but it's only a tiny handful really.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

From experience the community doesn't do this often, the attitude even in Savage being "play the class you enjoy, you'll perform better than trying to bring the top meta class". RDM as an example is perfectly fine, having Raise, Vercure and decent dps yet BLM having 0 utility still sees a lot of play too. As does WHM despite no shields or raid buffs. The community does get stuck into weird notions like "2 melee 2 ranged", "Always Noct AST with WHM" or "no doubles" even when they don't need lb3, but they're generally fine on class choice.

The fear of the community mindset shouldn't hinder class design. Players really aren't that bad. Sure some people exclude classes, but it's only a tiny handful really.

---

Admittedly, I haven't done any high end content, but the "weird notion" of 2 melee 2 ranged seems to be a biproduct of both strategies being designed for that for balance, combined with the fact that you get main stat buffs by having Tank, Healer, Melee, Ranged Physical, and Ranged Magical in the group. That covers the 2 ranged for the bonus (1 physical, 1 magical) then you have an extra spot which just defaults to melee because of symmetry it seems.

As for the healers, typical they want 1 shield and 1 regen healer which, again, is not "weird." It's because both are good in certain situations and having 1 of each creates a powerful team (2 regen isn't as bad as 2 shield, but it still isn't as powerful as 1 of each, that's why there's "no doubles"). Fact of the matter is the game pushes people toward this "weird" notions by how it's designed, sometimes it does it explicitly (e.g. the main stat bonus for one of each job type) and sometimes implicitly (e.g. not allowing shields to stack, regens and shields being better in different situations, giving classes different kinds of group wide damage buffs), but it's the game that causes this, it's not some weird superficial rule that the community has come up with.

Also, the community doesn't do this _now_ because of how things are set up. Though I'd be surprised if people during progression or people competing for top kill times don't grab specific classes if all other things are equal (e.g. player skill). RDM/SMN for prog groups because of the extra rezzes for example. BLM/SAM with some good group buffs if they're looking for fast kill time, etc.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

From experience the community doesn't do this often, the attitude even in Savage being "play the class you enjoy, you'll perform better than trying to bring the top meta class". RDM as an example is perfectly fine, having Raise, Vercure and decent dps yet BLM having 0 utility still sees a lot of play too.

---

IDK man.
I only started at the tail end of Stormblood, but even then I ran afoul of parties "needing" a bard or a ninja all too often.
And in this expac we saw it taper off with the homogenization, but it still happens. The most prominent example being that for day 1 prog on TEA most groups were passing up RDMs. SMN was overturned and BLM is super lovely right now too, so if you were gonna bring a caster people were told to swap from RDM or GTFO.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Liam_Harper

From experience the community doesn't do this often, the attitude even in Savage being "play the class you enjoy, you'll perform better than trying to bring the top meta class". RDM as an example is perfectly fine, having Raise, Vercure and decent dps yet BLM having 0 utility still sees a lot of play too. As does WHM despite no shields or raid buffs. The community does get stuck into weird notions like "2 melee 2 ranged", "Always Noct AST with WHM" or "no doubles" even when they don't need lb3, but they're generally fine on class choice.

The fear of the community mindset shouldn't hinder class design. Players really aren't that bad. Sure some people exclude classes, but it's only a tiny handful really.

---

That's because job balance this expansion has actually been fairly on point. The difference between the top performing jobs and the lowest performing jobs in a role has been pretty minimal, but in the past expansions that definitely hasn't been the case. In Heavensward Dragoon and Ninja were both significantly more powerful than Monk due to their raid contributions and by the middle of the expansion people were locking Monk out of PF groups. The same thing happened in Stormblood to Monk and Samurai though it was on a smaller scale.

For a non-dps example, in Heavensward when Zurvan Extreme was current and the skip soar or disband meme was reality, people started locking Warrior's out of PFs because Holmgang's duration was too short to allow it to cheese a certain mechanic that Hallowed Ground or Living Dead could. If there ends up being a big enough incentive to take one job within a given role over another people absolutely will block the other jobs out.

Yeah, I think the problem also lies with the encounter design itself... Normal modes are way too easy. The filter there is just knowing the telegraphs or stack markers, so you can avoid dying. Abilities like Mantra and Tactician are barely useful because there's so much overhealing on Normal modes... Anti-tankbusters like Addle or Feint also make little to no impact. Outside of the dps boosting utilities like TA or Embolden, there's anything meaningful unless you're doing Savage and beyond.

The answer also isn't just buffing those utilities... The whole encounter design got to be tuned around it, or what would happen is that Savages would become more difficult and Normals easier.

A few of "personal" niche utilities that are interesting in theory, but slightly useless either due to its design or the encounter design:
- It feels good as a BRD to have a "better Esuna", but... when I can really use that?
- Mug has unique effect loot drops, but it rarely works, let along for dungeon content.
- SMN's Physick is a niche, defensive utility but useless since it still doesn't scale with INT.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Rongway

The thing is, this is really the only place where such abilities would make a difference, and they can't give us abilities that would make a difference in Savage because then the community mindset would be to prioritize the job that has the difference-making ability to the exclusion of others when given a choice.

---

I get why that's a thing so don't get me wrong, but that is exactly why I can't stand the vocal minority and their obsession with DPSing above all else. The X% DPS increase is just plain boring. And gameplay feel will always be more meaningful to me than raw numbers, I'm sorry to say, no matter what equadions people come up with.

Here is hoping for 6.0 .

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by LeonKeyh

Admittedly, I haven't done any high end content, but the "weird notion" of 2 melee 2 ranged seems to be a biproduct of both strategies being designed for that for balance, combined with the fact that you get main stat buffs by having Tank, Healer, Melee, Ranged Physical, and Ranged Magical in the group. That covers the 2 ranged for the bonus (1 physical, 1 magical) then you have an extra spot which just defaults to melee because of symmetry it seems.

As for the healers, typical they want 1 shield and 1 regen healer which, again, is not "weird." It's because both are good in certain situations and having 1 of each creates a powerful team (2 regen isn't as bad as 2 shield, but it still isn't as powerful as 1 of each, that's why there's "no doubles"). Fact of the matter is the game pushes people toward this "weird" notions by how it's designed, sometimes it does it explicitly (e.g. the main stat bonus for one of each job type) and sometimes implicitly (e.g. not allowing shields to stack, regens and shields being better in different situations, giving classes different kinds of group wide damage buffs), but it's the game that causes this, it's not some weird superficial rule that the community has come up with.

Also, the community doesn't do this _now_ because of how things are set up. Though I'd be surprised if people during progression or people competing for top kill times don't grab specific classes if all other things are equal (e.g. player skill). RDM/SMN for prog groups because of the extra rezzes for example. BLM/SAM with some good group buffs if they're looking for fast kill time, etc.

---

As you said yourself, you haven't done any high end content so it's not surprising that your idea of how things should/ could work differs from reality. A lot of people think similiar until really getting into endgame content and notice that a lot of what gets thrown around in general is a lie. NN, party chats in DF content, reddit etc. is full of superficial knowledge or even outright false claims.

But a few things:
- as you said, one physical ranged, one caster and one melee is enough for the 5% buff. Locking slots to double melee because of "symmetry" makes no sense, it's completely arbitary and is the reason why it's a weird notion. There is no downside from a mechanical standpoint to having dbl caster or dbl physical over dbl melee. If the party has a RDM or an AST (or even both) then dbl melee nets those two a bit more rDPS/ less hassle with RNG but this is rarely the reason to go dbl melee, let alone in PF. The community is simply of the mindset that you have to go dbl melee because... reasons?
- dbl regen is in fact stronger than regen/ shield which is why it makes no sense to go Noct with a WHM co heal outside early prog. And I mean EARLY prog when everyone is standing there in crafted gear and there is a real danger of getting one shot through mitigation. Noct/ WHM is a really weak comp in almost every setting because it has a far lower free heal potency than Diurnal/ WHM, thus forcing both healers to heal more and drop dps. It absolutely 100% IS a rule made up by the community that makes no sense because they enforce something that is making the healers lives harder for "safety" reasons... which is completely backwards.

Speedrun/ rank log run parties will prefer certain combinations over others, like no RDM would ever join a single melee comp when going for ranked logs but those are outliers and there will always be a mathematically best choice. But this mathematically choice doesn't matter even the tiniest bit until the party as a whole took care of more pressing matters, e.g. keeping proper uptime, reducing rotational mistakes to a minimum, adjusting to more uptime friendly strats etc.
Right now, the comp matters relatively little beyond filling all 3 dps roles for the 5% buff and perhaps avoiding doubles whose buffs don't stack.

It is true that "Raid buffs are offsets to a job's dps". Dancer is centred around this concept. Take one step further. To my best ability to summarize the perspective in this thread is: Current "raid buffs" don't have a sense of impact & a sense of control & personal gain. I think they should be separated when discussing this topic.

Sense of impact: Look at AST at the end of stormblood. A 10% raid-wide dps buff but with RNG. It felt significant (felt great!). But the issue with balance led us to what we have now - divination. Now ppl don't feel that impact whenever they cast a raid buff. You won't get noticed when you have three different seals, etc...

Sense of Control: Look at BRD at the end of stormblood. Foe's requiem took one gcd and allowed you to trade mp for raid-wide buff duration. And bards could turn on and off whenever they like. But it brought the bard's ceiling very high since they can buff any team comps to their best interests (although I agree brd is kinda braindead now). Now almost every raid damage buffs are engraved into each job's personal rotation, it's like "just happen to buff the party as well". GavynG mentions Mantra. Compare Mantra with Brotherhood it's not hard to tell the difference. You choose to use Mantra, but you do not choose to use Brotherhood, given they are all "one-tap" utility.

All this gibberish comes to the homogenization that ppl already talked about in this thread. We need homogenization and this expansion does a great job of not letting any class get cast out in raids. But the jobs feel somewhat boring or "same feeling" when playing. SE must fix this. But I don't believe simply buff or remove a utility would help. They, need to understand what sense or impact and control mean to players. Let's look at some examples.
Trick-attack is one of the most impactful and satisfying skills in utility. It has 3 factors: 1. it requires sui-ton to cast - resource management. 2. it's 60s cd which aligns with every job's burst - impactful 3. it is one of the hardest-hitting skills for NIN - personal gain.
Since GavynG brought up vercure: 1. vercure requires a gcd which trades RDM's dps - resource management. 2. vercure can do 3 things, heal pty, follow with a rez, proc dual-cast in downtime for dps gain - impactful. 3. vercure can heal RDM which makes RDM be one of solo champs - personal gain.
Next, the memes, Bard's songs: 1. Battle voice requires a song that is not hard management but annoying in dungeons. Other songs do not require bard to do anything particular. 2. battle voice is a "soft buff" that buffs RNG, other buffs are negligible. 3. BRD can't hear their songs.
Last but not the least, all the "tap-to-win raid buffs" here: litany, brotherhood, devilment, battle voice, chain.

In conclusion, if a utility is impactful, reward for gameplay, and personally rewarding, then it is a good one. The issue is: we know what's good, but SE doesn't. SE's current balance approach is: remove one factor from the three so a utility is balanced and diverse. To me, it really is taking a shortcut to the problem (unless they are bigbrain leaving space for 6.0 upgrade). Now all the bad/boring utility can be categorized into not impactful, or one-tap, or decoupled from the job. Like many ppl points out, I really enjoyed the old days of utility meta where sometime a job could center around a particular skill or a pty utility in rotation. I wish SE could notice the issue at hand and take time for upgrading these utilities. Learning which GCD to tap a raid buff is not hard and not fun anymore.

The point of all this is did square accomplish what they sat out to do? Kill the meta so all jobs are viable for high end raiding? Yes they surely did. But they also destroyed and I mean destroyed certain jobs to do that. Astrologian, Bard and Scholar are the main 3. And for what? The high end raiders didn't even complain. Honestly, I don't even see a huge difference in people trying the high end raiding. It's the same small percent community it's always been. Square made a horrible decision when they decided to butcher these jobs. There is nothing wrong with meta jobs. Most moms have them. Square makes it seem like if every job is not viable there is a problem and there isn't. Everyone wasn't playing Astros, Brds and Schs. All jobs were played.

Now you see allot of forum post about fix astro cards and give back their time magic, fix bard and fix scholar. This is not what the player base wanted. Square took it upon themselves to pull this mess when it wasn't even needed. Those jobs weren't broken and you know the old saying. If it ain't broke don't fix it. We pay for this game to have fun with our favourite jobs. Then seeing them destroyed like that just broke my heart. Some jobs were damn near unplayable when 5.0 dropped. Looking at you Astro. Square needs to get it together and stop destroying jobs just because of their own delusions of what they think the player base wants or needs. I truly hope they been reading these forums because there have been some great ideas on how to break this unnecessary homogenization and give jobs back their true identities.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by IsshinAshina

In conclusion, if a utility is impactful, reward for gameplay, and personally rewarding, then it is a good one. The issue is: we know what's good, but SE doesn't. SE's current balance approach is: remove one factor from the three so a utility is balanced and diverse. To me, it really is taking a shortcut to the problem (unless they are bigbrain leaving space for 6.0 upgrade). Now all the bad/boring utility can be categorized into not impactful, or one-tap, or decoupled from the job. Like many ppl points out, I really enjoyed the old days of utility meta where sometime a job could center around a particular skill or a pty utility in rotation. I wish SE could notice the issue at hand and take time for upgrading these utilities. Learning which GCD to tap a raid buff is not hard and not fun anymore.

---

The issue is that utility is largely worthless. In the grand scheme of things the only thing that matters is dps, dps and more dps,, and if for any reason you fail. the answer is, yes you guessed it more dps...

The devs have backed themselves into a corner they have no way to get out from and you can see this because every time they try to push out they get pushed right back in by the players..

Recently they said ok guys we've tuned encounters to need more healing and make healing more important... Lasted a whole 10 minutes before healers were right back in the dps, dps, morrrreeee dps mode..

Before that it was making things hit harder so "be sure to meld some vitallity or tenacity" LOLS. tanks be like f that im using slaying gear on the right side cos dps dps dps

Even mechanics often get ignored because dps is king so screw that nechanic take the hit. more uptime more dps.. and its not like its ever going to strain the healers. one ogcd heal and carry on....

Resources are near infinite now as well so all that utility is shot to hell. and this pushes the developers even further into this corner they cant get out from.. The homogenization of the jobs has basically pinned them to the walls.

Everything they try to do to push out of that corner doesnt work becasue of there obsession with balance... they need to bring back some real diversity and uniqueness to jobs if they want to shift this dps mentality.

I don't really see a problem with how it is currently.

It's the most balanced we've had it, and diversity should come from how the jobs' rotation works etc IMO.

Raid damage utility... Sure, but not all jobs.

Other kinds of support utility doesn't really add anything but problems, unless we're talking about some utility that all physical ranged for example get.

They can't balance a fight around utility, which I hope everyone here realize. That would brake the game.

So if they can't balance around having a certain utility from one dps job, then why would you need it? Why would you sacrifice DPS for it?

If all DPS jobs got some utility (not rDPS), and therefore had similar DPS, then the utility would either be pointless or it would be very unbalanced.

Only reason Red Mage has still been pretty good even when it hasn't given as much rDPS, is because raising someone is one of the very few things that can (IF people even die) actually be important.

They won't give everyone instant raises, so what else can they give jobs that won't be useless or totally broken?

For example mantra isn't really doing anything. Maybe in very select situations it can help, but if you wipe without it, someone has messed up. An even if it were to help in some very specific scenario (doubt it), it would only possibly let a healer do one less healing ability or something, which in the end just amounts to DPS.

So again, why not just make each job unique in terms of how they perform their rotation etc? If you don't think they are that now, well that's another point, but that can be fixed.

It's the nature of the beast tho... The more unique benefits a certain job/class has in MMORPGS, bigger are the chances of cherry picking and when it comes to desirability. WoW had a similar curve with utility x homogenization.

Homogenization is needed for balancing purposes, but inversely terrible for individual fulfillment.

I keep thinking that the only possible way to address this without less bumps is a support role turned official. Dunno if it would really think in XIV without a lot of shifted gears, tho.

Or, staying as it is, the other thing to make jobs interesting is investing in less homogenized playstyles instead... Which is kinda the situation they're going right now for DPSers, but not as much for tank and healers.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Payadopa

I get why that's a thing so don't get me wrong, but that is exactly why I can't stand the vocal minority and their obsession with DPSing above all else. The X% DPS increase is just plain boring. And gameplay feel will always be more meaningful to me than raw numbers, I'm sorry to say, no matter what equadions people come up with.

Here is hoping for 6.0 .

---

To be fair, that isn't the community at fault nor a vocal minority. The dev team simply doesn't give us any reason to care about anything beyond damage. Look no further then healing. They're all but begging for a greater emphasise on healing and utility—which the dev team clearly prefers when we see adjustments like they did recently with Energy Drain. The problem is they continuously focus on the lowest common denominator; that healer who thinks Cure III is an upgrade over Cure II and who spams Medica II at the slightest out going damage. This results is utterly laughable healing "checks". A prime example right now is E12N. Her outgoing damage is so low, you literally can have one healer AFK and no one would notice. Hard to get excited about healing when you'll literally do nothing more than spam Glare in most content.

Simply put. The community, especially at the higher level raid scene, adapts to the tools we're given. And throughout this game's life span, damage is, sadly, all that matters.

Like everyone else has said, damage utility is the best utility in that it's the one that has the most consistent returns and the tangible results to prove it. As great as extra healing and defense are, the problem is that fights are scripted in not just the rotation but also the damage as well. You know how hard things are going to hit once you get the flow done. For example, the only gcd healing I have to do in Emerald is the orbs for 2/2/2/2. Everything else I can just gcd healing because the damage is that predictable and spread out. Any extra mitigation outside of reprisal and the range utility is superfluous at best. Only in certain fights like UCOB golden bahamut or TEA perfect alex is more defensive utility needed.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Maltothoris

. Only in certain fights like UCOB golden bahamut or TEA perfect alex is more defensive utility needed.

---

And appreciated, as usually in these encounter the dps is rarely an issue

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Raikai

Homogenization is needed for balancing purposes, but inversely terrible for individual fulfillment.

---

This statement may have some sort of intuitive appeal, but I don't think it's particularly connected to the reality of the game.

NIN really doesn't play like DNC really doesn't play like BLM really doesn't play like DRG.

And another thing!

On a subjective level, hitting Trick Attack feels like utility to me. Yes, I'm planning my rotation around it to maximize my damage, but I'm hitting it to increase everyone's damage. I say that as someone who loves utility on DPS.

In the abstract, more non-damage utility is great, but in practice (as has been well described by many people in this thread) it's a tough design space to navigate. Utility in a game like this (and in most MMOs) needs to be damage or damage-equivalent to be balanceable—however, I do think that FF14 could perhaps push harder on the damage-equivalent side of things. (For instance, giving people resources that are then used for DPS can be balanced like DPS without being merely DPS.)

All of that being said, DNC is one of the best-designed support DPS classes in any MMO, imho—balanceable (and balanced), impactful, and fun to play. Don't pretend like you don't like it when the group's DNC slaps dance partner on you. You like it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ForteNightshade

To be fair, that isn't the community at fault nor a vocal minority. The dev team simply doesn't give us any reason to care about anything beyond damage. Look no further then healing. They're all but begging for a greater emphasise on healing and utility—which the dev team clearly prefers when we see adjustments like they did recently with Energy Drain. The problem is they continuously focus on the lowest common denominator; that healer who thinks Cure III is an upgrade over Cure II and who spams Medica II at the slightest out going damage. This results is utterly laughable healing "checks". A prime example right now is E12N. Her outgoing damage is so low, you literally can have one healer AFK and no one would notice. Hard to get excited about healing when you'll literally do nothing more than spam Glare in most content.

Simply put. The community, especially at the higher level raid scene, adapts to the tools we're given. And throughout this game's life span, damage is, sadly, all that matters.

---

Yeah, I agree to a point. The devs should facilitate us not looking at only the damage output. With that being said, I don't get the obsession with balance in a game that, let's face it, has very easy combat encounters 95% of the time (that's not to say I don't screw up often, but encounters are more about memorisation than adaptation).

If you get excluded by your raid static because you play X (X being the lowest job on the meta list), just go to another one. I have a great static and if I want to go in as X nobody cares.

Any content can be cleared with any combination of jobs but yet we must homogenise everything lest a job gets excluded. That sounds more like a community problem. But, again, I think it's absolutely fair that the devs should communicate that better through the game.

But at the end of the day I still love the game and I'm having fun so there is that. I just hope we get some uniqueness back. ^^

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Payadopa

I don't get the obsession with balance

---

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Payadopa

Any content can be cleared with any combination of jobs

---

Here's the secret: these two things are related.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Equitable_Remedy

Here's the secret: these two things are related.

---

Any content could be cleared with any combination of jobs in Stormblood, as well, and jobs had nearly equal usage, too (at least in the healer department). And yet they still gutted the healers and tanks and gave us the ugly, gray blandness of homogenization we have now (where there are clear preferences for specific classes when you look at participation, too, with ridiculous shit like WHM being used more than SCH and AST combined and WHM having as much as 4x the usage of AST early on in the expansion, and with WAR facing the lowest usage of the tanks by a significant amount in spite of the damage of the tanks being within a very small margin of each other. The obsession with balance and making all the classes play the same is hurting usage and variety, pretty significantly at that.

EDIT: not to mention the lore trainwreck that is caused by the AST changes (Arcana butchered, Jannequinard made a rambling fool instead of "bad in practice knowledgeable with theory", time manipulation completely dropped and thus the meaning of the 60 quest somewhat lost, Jannequinard and Leveva constantly talking about royal road and nonsense that's not used anymore making them look incredibly unlearned, and a lot more) ,and SCH changes (Faeries have no difference now, "use the leeches", the soldier side of Nymain Scholars lost with their DPS gutting, and some other small stuff), and to a lesser extent DRK (no real punishment for "going in too deep" with dark abilities anymore, which is a key theme of the 30-50 quests).

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Laphicet

Any content could be cleared with any combination of jobs in Stormblood, as well, and jobs had nearly equal usage, too (at least in the healer department). And yet they still gutted the healers and tanks and gave us the ugly, gray blandness of homogenization we have now (where there are clear preferences for specific classes when you look at participation, too, with ridiculous shit like WHM being used more than SCH and AST combined and WHM having as much as 4x the usage of AST early on in the expansion, and with WAR facing the lowest usage of the tanks by a significant amount in spite of the damage of the tanks being within a very small margin of each other. The obsession with balance and making all the classes play the same is hurting usage and variety, pretty significantly at that.

EDIT: not to mention the lore trainwreck that is caused by the AST changes (Arcana butchered, Jannequinard made a rambling fool instead of "bad in practice knowledgeable with theory", time manipulation completely dropped and thus the meaning of the 60 quest somewhat lost, Jannequinard and Leveva constantly talking about royal road and nonsense that's not used anymore making them look incredibly unlearned, and a lot more) ,and SCH changes (Faeries have no difference now, "use the leeches", the soldier side of Nymain Scholars lost with their DPS gutting, and some other small stuff), and to a lesser extent DRK (no real punishment for "going in too deep" with dark abilities anymore, which is a key theme of the 30-50 quests).

---

This comment right here.

I completely agree with everything you said. However, I do have faith. During the keynote or live letter not sure which it was. Yoshi did say he wanted to bring back the fantasy of the jobs. To me, maybe that was an apology for screwing up some of the jobs in Shadowbringers. Especially the healers and tanks.

We shall see though how true they holds up in Endwalker.

This game went from adps to rdps around SB but at least in SB they were double digit buffs, stance dancing, fairy solo heals were still a thing. This game used to be the weakest player had to perform to match others, but now its the party that has to match the weakest player. Utility is non-existent and what was once utility was consolidated into one of two categories: dmg up or heal. TP being gutted also removed half of the utility that could have existed in the game. Every job can sustain itself, where as previous expansion you had to rely on another party member to help you when you are in dire straits. The focus has shifted from what can each job bring to the party that no one else can provide, to now, where all you need to be is halfway decent wince all jobs have the same toolkit.

Interesting shift of ideology to appease the casual crowd so we'll see if it pays off in the long run. Luckily the story and music is good with gameplay being quite shallow, but 2/3 is not that good and I expected more of FFXIV and the foundations ARR and HW have set. I can tolerate good story and music to a point but when the gameplay is lacking, its a deal breaker because I personally play games for the gameplay and the story and music are just the icing on the cake.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Equitable_Remedy

Here's the secret: these two things are related.

---

Hard disagree. There is a difference between all jobs being good enough and roles playing pretty much the same.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Payadopa

Hard disagree. There is a difference between all jobs being good enough and roles playing pretty much the same.

---

But this is not what he quoted

You said " I don't get the obsession with balance" and "Any content can be cleared with any combination of jobs"
to which he replied that both are related.

Which is true, it is because jobs are balanced (numerically for dps, ability to survive/make group survive for Tank and Heal) that you can bring any job to any content.
It is because people freak out for 500rdps gap that everything is very close together when it comes to rdps and utility. (the later scaling poorly as we get more gear, but on the other hand dps balance becomes less of an issue we get said gear)

So.. he's right, they are related,

And you're also right, there's a difference between job balance and gameplay (I assume that's what you meant by "roles playing pretty much the same).

You can have very diverse jobs and still maintain a decent balance if the content is designed right.

if we look back at early heavensward they tried to diversify tanks by making paladin physical defence and drk magic defence and war being in your face dps.. that was pretty cool and would have helped each attain its own identity.

where it fell short was badly designed content. quite literally an entire tier of content was almost exclusively magic damage based and thats where they went wrong. not with the jobs themselves.had they done it right that could have allowed for some much more interesting tank swaps than the arbitarry forced swap because of a debuff mechanic.

utility is effectively the same. you can balance well around utility if you design good content.. taking something like blms sleep one of the few things that does still exist. could provide utility without being mandatory. design encounters where players might need to step on weighted platforms to activate a shield. a blm might then have the ability to sleep adds on those platforms to provide the weight allowing the players a little more freedom.. it opens up an option for gameplay without being a mandatory element. another approach might be having the off tank grab them and hold them all on the platform. and thats just one quick example off the top of my head. well designed content could have hundreds. taking a blm to sleep mobs there might beconsidered optimum as it allows more uptime but wouldnt in anyway be mandatory to clear the content from a design perspective.

homogenization is a terrible way to balance because everything ends upbeing exactly the same...

it'd be like a racing game with just 1 car. sure you can change the colour but its the same car. racing games actually provide a solid example of balance through diversity and content.. dozens of different cars. some have super quick acceleration but terrible handling and an average top speed.. others have a high top speed with decent handling but pretty poor acceration. others have amazing handling average acceration but a pretty low top speed. yet balance is maintained through decent track design. one car may leave the others in the dust on the long straights. but another will blow them away in the tight windy corners.

shooters are the same. you have ya big bad close range shotguns, and ya long range sniper rifles but decent level design provides balance. a shotgun in a big open area would be a bad idea but when ducking through buildings and alleys it would give you a pretty decent advantage over that guy with a sniper rifle.

MMO's are really no different decentyl designed fights and encounters would allow for a great deal ofdiversity between jobs that would make them all feel unique and different, but this homogenization where everything feels the exact same is just boring.. a paladin spamming holy spirit is really no different than a warrior spamming fellcleave, or a drk or gnb spamming whatever.. every jobs brings theexactsame stuff to the table thats its just boring.

Why would you have a BLM do it rather than a healer with Repose? A healer's GCD is worth less than a BLM after all.

Also, your 2 examples do not work. In the racing one, assuming it is more of a SIM than an arcade racer, in theory, what you do is tune your car for the track. If the track is windy, you can sacrifice your top speed for better grip and acceleration, if it has more straights, you need to think about how much top speed you can potentially sacrifice to give you the best outcome. etc. Arcade racers don't tend to follow this as they are a completely different racing style, drift for boost and keeping speed, powerups etc. It isn't a good parallel.

For shooters, it is the same. If you are on a map with tight corridors, you use the short range more destructive weapons, if it has plenty of high vantage points, you use a sniper. Again, you adapt to the map and take what suits it.

If you wanted to follow the same philosophy, you would take different jobs dependant on the fight and with the design philosophy being, any job can tackle any content.

In this regard, any potential a job has should be shared throughout the whole role. This is why all Melee have a stun, all ranged have interrupt and tanks have both.

To make jobs feel unique, it is all about how the job feels when being used, not differentiating them based on utility. Rotational variance is so that everyone can find a job they enjoy playing, not every job has to be enjoyed by everyone, however utility variance is something that can affect whether a job sees content or not.

Going back to your example, I have already mentioned Repose, however, having an Off Tank hold a mob on the platform, well, you have just taken out the tank for the raid DPS, so it will be a loss, unless the content is designed to have the OT stand there and contribute nothing.

Going back to the HW example. With warrior being so strong, and the meta being, as much DPS as possible, Warrior was the obvious choice. Then, to determine the other tank, is the fight mainly magical or physical? You would then pick one or the other based on that. If we were to carry that over into Shadowbringers, Gunbreaker would be another high DPS tank, so your preferred party would be Warrior and Gunbreaker, remembering that all tanks have to be able to survive all things, so they are perfectly fine bringing 2 tanks that have the damage capabilities of an actual DPS player, or close to it.

This is why Tanks now have similar DPS and a similar defensive kit, this is why Warrior no longer has a full damage down, DRK doesn't have the INT down and PLD doesn't have the strength down etc.

So to recap, rotational variance is how you make a job feel different and having to much variation on what a job can provide utility wise (not counting DPS increases) will cause some jobs to be taken over others.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Also, your 2 examples do not work. In the racing one, assuming it is more of a SIM than an arcade racer, in theory, what you do is tune your car for the track. If the track is windy, you can sacrifice your top speed for better grip and acceleration, if it has more straights, you need to think about how much top speed you can potentially sacrifice to give you the best outcome. etc. Arcade racers don't tend to follow this as they are a completely different racing style, drift for boost and keeping speed, powerups etc. It isn't a good parallel.

For shooters, it is the same. If you are on a map with tight corridors, you use the short range more destructive weapons, if it has plenty of high vantage points, you use a sniper. Again, you adapt to the map and take what suits it.

---

They can and do work. Tuning your car for a particular race really isn't any different to how many mmos ofte nworked. Especially the older ones, You "tuned" your character to the encounters in much the same way..
Oh hey this boss has really high defence and is tough as nails. I'll trade some strength for attack power..
Oh this boss is quite squishy and agile but he doesnt hit too hard. trade some of that defence for dexterity or accuraccy...
Oh this boss isnt terribly tough but hits like an absolute truck, maybe trade off some of that attack poweror dexterity for extra defence or hp..
It's really no different to the example you gave about tuning cars.. But homogonization and over simplification of literally everything has lead to everything being the exact same and thats both shallow and boring.

Shooters it works as well as most of the decent shooters have well designed maps that have quite alot of diversity in there design. You might get a big frieght terminal map with lots of wide open spaces but on the very same map find lots of freight containers and lorries and stuff thrown around even warehouses full of freight where making large enclosed spaces. Balance is then obtained by the enviroment no one weapon or loadout has the advantage accross the entire map and this is often where the fun comes from as it becomes less about meta or strong builds and more about player choices and how they actually make use of the enviroment.

These are all elements that add depth and complexity to gameplay and thats what makes games fun.. Simplicity and homogenization doesn't which is why many jobs feel so boring to play. It's not just the jobs either. SHs actual content is pretty widely regarded as the blandest content in the game. so shallow and lacking in comparion to previous expacs.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Equitable_Remedy

This statement may have some sort of intuitive appeal, but I don't think it's particularly connected to the reality of the game.

NIN really doesn't play like DNC really doesn't play like BLM really doesn't play like DRG.

---

Maybe I wasn't clear, but when I meant homogenization was regarding the OP's topic of utility or support. Further in my response I'm even stating that a way to counter this is to make the playstyle non-homogenized, and that's something that already happens with the DPS jobs at least.

I personally wish that it was more evident for tanks and healers, but then, for that to happen the encounters themselves (or rather, the formulae that they usually follow) would need to be redesigned, because those roles are much more close tied to it than the DPSers'.

I just wish free movement wasn't considered utility in a game where it's never needed