DoT Mage

Just curious if there are any other dot mage lovers out there. I miss the ARR SMN. Where dot management was the focus. At this point I’d not ask for the current commoner to be reverted as too many enjoy it, but maybe if there are enough of us we could get another added. Say geomancer using elemental dots like drown. Miss the old scholar too.

So any other dot lovers here?

I know Square cut back on a lot of dots after large parties of players started running into the debuff limit. If there's a reason why Square doesn't want a class with a lot of dots to manage, I think that's their biggest one.

I'd love to have a proper DoT Mage in FFXIV as long as it isn't SMN. But in order to have a proper DoT Mage, it would require every job being reworked in a way, where the overall amount of debuffs and dots distributed on every existing job would be reduced and even removed on most.

So yeah, it definitely is doable, but i would prefer it if SCH would be that DoT mage but i highly doubt that the FFXIV development team will ever understand how to properly design Jobs without making them all look the same within their designated role.

As long as Tri-Disaster replaces the reset mechanic with charges and gets a cooldown tweak I’ll be content with the number of DoTs it has. Healers make more sense with staggered DoTs, but I don’t see them getting more than three either for the above reasons.

we had a proper dot mage, it was called scholar. A niche that suits a healer so they can do plenty of damage while theorectically healing (I say theorectically because of SE's aversion to making incoming damage significant enough to require more than a single assize or medica 2)

reaching the debuff limit was what caused them to lower the amount of debuffs available, yet now we got 48 player raids with their debuffs and apparently that doesn't hit the limit? Bring back sch dot mage!

They could easily solve the debuff limit by giving SMN/SCH a single DoT that you bolster with their own buffs. So instead of it being multiple DoTs and multiple debuffs, you stack personal buffs that increase the potency of your DoT.
Cast Bio to inflict a 40 potency DoT.
Stack a Miasma buff to turn that Bio DoT into an 80 potency DoT, etc.

The problem with DoT mages though is having the rest of their expanded kit having any kind of substantial impact.
Either the DoTs are so weak as to be inconsequential or all of your combined DoTs account for most of your damage output and your big showstoppers (like Bahamut/Phoenix, etc.) aren't very impactful.
I think combining DoTs with Summons (which acts like DoTs themselves anyway) was always a bad move tbh. It's really stifled the jobs growth potential.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

I think combining DoTs with Summons (which acts like DoTs themselves anyway) was always a bad move tbh. It's really stifled the jobs growth potential.

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I have this same impression when trying to play SMN now... It's so focused on the trance phases right now that dots, and even the Aetherflow/Fester spells feels like something second-rated, or out of place.

I don't think there are any true "DoT jobs" in XIV... The ones that have to babysit more than one DoT always have bigger "toys" to entertain themselves with, leaving the dots as forgotten cousins over a corner... Until 30s passes by and you have to refresh them.

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Originally Posted by Raikai

I have this same impression when trying to play SMN now... It's so focused on the trance phases right now that dots, and even the Aetherflow/Fester spells feels like something second-rated, or out of place.

I don't think there are any true "DoT jobs" in XIV... The ones that have to babysit more than one DoT always have bigger "toys" to entertain themselves with, leaving the dots as forgotten cousins over a corner... Until 30s passes by and you have to refresh them.

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In Bard's case they actually mean something because they enable Repertoire. In Summoner's case, they're just the caster equivalent to pet autos, and are there mostly to help with the sustained DPS section of the rotation. To me, they should interact with the Egi in some manner, such as enabling gauge generation when Egi autoattack afflicted targets, which then gets spent on Enkindle/Egi Assaults or their functional replacements. It wouldn't be the only source, but probably the largest source. People didn't like FesterRuin, but it did make you care about DoT uptime in this manner. I think I would limit it to gauge generation and burst cooldowns like Fester rather than some direct damage tax on Ruin or other filler, as then it's akin to SAM's gauge bonus for landing positionals in terms of proportion. It's less upsetting that way, at the very least.


The only other way to make DoTs interesting is to add some additional layer to them directly. An example of this would be making the DoT accumulate stacks while it ticks (up to some cap), that increases the potency or frequency it deals damage and can then be spent as a resource to empower burst, or borrowing WoW's overcap duration protection so you can refresh them without dropping potency, and have the remaining duration itself be the resource you spend.

To me, SE should make DoTs interact with Egi to make SMN's filler more varied. I could see the baseline gauge generation replace Further Ruin IV & EA Charges for movement outright, while additional sources could come from Demis and enable Egi burst.

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Originally Posted by Semirhage

I know Square cut back on a lot of dots after large parties of players started running into the debuff limit. If there's a reason why Square doesn't want a class with a lot of dots to manage, I think that's their biggest one.

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I loved managing DoTs on SMN of old but this is a correct statement. Doing Alliance raids sometimes DoTs would drop off or be over written because the system only allowed for _x_ amount of debuffs on a target at a time. I believe it was 24 or 36.

The idea behind a pet jobs having DoTs was to allow player a background DPS while they are focused on controlling the pet. Obviously that is something that isn't really needed in the current build but who know what the future holds.

This probably wouldn't have worked based on the resources needed to create this many classes from the get-go, but I think in hindsight it would've made more sense for Arcanist, Scholar, and Summoner to each be their own jobs:

- Arcanist the DoT mage
- Summoner the Pet mage
- Scholar the Pet healer

Largely simplified labels (especially Scholar all things considered) but you get the idea.

You'd think with the improvements they've made over the years they'd increase the debuff limit. DoT classes are my favourite in games but I just don't click with BRD (I used to like scholar a lot but thats a bygone time)

They changed summoner because people wanted summoner to be about the summons and not just dot maintenance and you have a pet. I won't be opposed to a more dot centered caster. Let SMN drift further away from it, though.

who know, maybe in future xpac they will make green mage as a caster job, in sone fantasies green magic include alot of buff and debuff magic