Should the playerbase stop playing certain jobs?

This is a really long really rambly post so if that's not your jam, skip to the 3rd comment for the TL;DR

WHAT?

This is exactly what it says on the tin. Many players feel like their pleas are going completely unheard or even worse, heard loud and clear and then being dismissed.

-SAM and NIN players are clearly frustrated with the recent changes to their jobs. Even despite the resounding displeasure and pushback across a significant percentage of the playerbase, SE still went through with it.

-SMN is probably one of the most controversial jobs in the game at the moment. Many older SMN players feel as though their job was completely dismantled and only a skeleton (if that) of it's former self. Even many players who like the current direction for summoner cite that the job is just too simplistic and feel like it's incomplete which is unacceptable for a job we have reworked every single expansion anyways.

-MCH is unironically the poster child of neglected jobs right now. Low damage, static gameplay, questionable job identity, and no true place to call home in the niche of the game. When they got to see their new actions for this expansion they got exactly ONE new rotation changing button. Everything else was just a potency buff and reskin. Even its most recent "buffs" feel more like an act of pity than a true change to address the problems for the job.

-Healers have been basically on mute to the devs for years. When they organized to force the developers to address their concerns, (boring damage "rotation", and not enough engagement in normal content) YoshiP himself said "If you want engaging content, play Ultimate"...I feel like I don't have to explain how much of an actual slap to the face this is. And then we recently learned that the games healer tester was "too good". What does that even mean? At the very least this lends credence to the outcry that the devs are actively trying to design content around players with the lowest form of competency.

-Tanks have admittedly been treated to a host of QoL changes this recent update. So unironically good for them.


If this reads like a crappy news article, good. I want people to realize FFXIV is neglecting jobs. Even the ones they don't play and the players are just plain TIRED. I wanna make sure we're all on the same page before I dip into the real meat of this post which is blatantly People should stop playing the jobs that Squeenix refuses to fix.

cut to the next comment because I can't go on a proper rant in the forums

I'm not talking about a simple "Well the MCH mains should just swap to BRD in most of their content." I mean, throw away those weapons and don't touch the job anymore. I'd say break the jobstone if I could, but you can't do that. So instead, just unmake the entire gearset. And that guy in your static telling you that he doesn't have any gear or has to learn a new job because of this? He was gonna do it next tier anyways so let's skip to the part where he gets fed up 3 months earlier. And while I would never recommend people close out certain jobs from partyfinder because that is a heartless act that goes against TOS and very detrimental to the status of the game overall and more importantly newer players who aren't a part of this literal riot I am trying to start.....Ask them too, to stop playing that undervalued job.

WHY?

Now that I've suggested my completely unreasonable and unfeasible action to send a message to SE, lets talk about why I unironically think you should stop playing your neglected job and how I think it'll force some changes.

1. SE uses more than just player feedback to identify the state of a job. One of these metrics is undeniably how many people are completing content with the job. They may not show it to you or me, but they have that info. If they see even a 30% cut to a jobs playerbase they know something is amiss. Will they do anything? No. We all know you'll be back to play the job for the next patch when they inevitable give it a single pps change and you run duties with it to figure out if you still hate it. That minor bump in metrics is all they need to pat themselves on the back and say that they did a good job.

2. We need something a little more aggressive than just complaining here on the forums. They say they read the forums and care about what you say. Do they? Kinda. They sure read what healers wanted.... and then promptly placed that information into the trashcan. With a smile no less! And if you still think they care... Samurai mains. They heard you. Loud. And. Clear. They even acknowledged you. They then determined that you would still play regardless of what they did and told you that they wanted you to feel out the changes a bit before you burned down the forums. Do you think they'll do it again in 6.2? So it's time people realized that the forums are pretty much a dead avenue for change. It's time to strike somewhere else. The game itself. Don't just complain here. Complain there too. Then come right back here and tell me how this post is literally ruining the game because literally if this actually went through there would never be a single healer in DF. EVER

Still ranting here next comment

3. Because you, the player, deserve to be angry about sweeping changes to your job that you and a large majority of your job base don't agree with. You deserve to ask for change. You deserve a better answer than "Go prog Ultimate," a better answer than "We think you will like the changes more than you think you do so please look forward to it." It's starting to become tedium don't you think? Doing all this just so the devs can blow you off for another year? Just so they can appeal to "Wider market" Even though a lot of that wider market agrees things are getting a little janked? Does everyone agree? Course not. The only group of people this big that can agree on any one thing is likely some type of hive mind and shouldn't be trusted.

Quick FAQ

Q:How do you expect people to follow this ridiculous plan of yours?
A: I don't. I just had a hot take and decided to share it on the Forums. Did a lot more thought and unnecessary ideation go into this than should have? Maybe. But here we are.

Q:Are you serious right now?
A: About 90% serious yes. At first I was gonna write this thing completely serious and with no format of joking and then I realized that I am not all that capable of maintaining seriousness for that long.

Q:This guy is some kinda throwaway account troll
A: Nah. That's my character name right there and you'll likely find me in the wolves den pier in Jenova in about an hour after I post this. Throwing away what little life I have.

Q:Why do you think the devs should listen to you some kinda hardcore player that just wishes for the "good ol' days" so you can push out the more casual player that the game is clearly designed for?

A: Shut. Up. I'm not a hardcore player. I don't think I really even fall into midcore at this point. I'm about as bad as anyone else and I don't feel like I need a return to expac 1-5 to have fun. I got here in like 5.3. I think that makes me old enough to to understand and want something from the game, but just new enough you can't describe me as some diehard loyal who's been in the game so long he can't think of anything else. You may have a different opinion on that. I just see the rest of the forums asking for things and not getting them and I posted my thoughts on how to get it done. Feel free to tell me otherwise though as I now feel satiated and will give the thread up to the world at large now.

TL;DR: I'm some nerd on the internet who thinks that people should be willing to just drop a job because it's literally awful. And I think you should get more than a dismissive comment when there's an actual overwhelming cry for change.

I agree and I see the dilemma.

Only recently have I delved into what other classes were going through, I was just busy enjoying a game for being a game until my SAM got hit. Suddenly another side I never seen was revealed cause I only play SAM, MSQ, Raid, Decorate and only played at end of ShB I believe about around the same time you started, my bubble is quite small.

It's a form of protest to let your voice be heard not just through text but also your actions. Right now I do not clear content as SAM no. But not out of protest, that's the side affect... the main reason is because " the desire to do anything with my SAM has been robbbed. "

A game is a game you go to a game to relax, but once you become passionate about something and they remove that about the game to the point they change it into frustration then it was all hindsight that we should have done something...

And this can be for any class or any player that plays a certain class or any part of the game. For the player base to unite for a certain change when many players enjoy the game for different reasons or in different ways is quite the feet... yet I don't disagree though, I do agree with your post... it's just a tall task... to have everyone on the same page.

Definitely gave your posts a Like

Physical ranged jobs have the amazing benefit of maximum uptime. Having lower damage output is a given. The devs simply need to up MCH numbers where necessary to compensate for the intended lack of party utility. That especially includes Wildfire, since it can't crit or d-hit. There's also odd jank like Flamethrower but the job isn't fundamentally broken. It has a clear design of big, hard hitting attacks and fast attack windows. It just needs some number turning and/or slight work.


SMN is also nowhere near as flawed as everyone tries to make it out to be. I have played the job since I started in 3.4 and never have I enjoyed it as much as now. Pet AI in this game is simply UTTER GARBAGE and it had to be reworked. Yes, I understand how people are sad about the rework. But there was no way around it. Personally, I miss dot management but what I got instead feels a lot more satisfying visually and thematically. The worst aspect I find about SMN is how tacked on Aetherflow is at this point. I'd rather it was gained by summoning or some other condition. Another "issue" I see a lot being brought up is the button consolidation. And really? Out of everything you can come up with, this is what you complain about? The same type of people that get petty over Ruin and Tri-Disaster not being replaced by their elemental version.
Is SMN too simple at times? Absolutely! But that isn't an issue, it's how the job plays and it's not like a low skill ceilling is problematic. By that definition every job should be reworked with extra conditions on a lot of their tools. If you just add detrimental conditions for the sake of difficulty, you'll drain yourself of enjoyment. You have to find a right balance in all things.
Just like the physical ranged, the high mobility means its damage is lower. That's just a fact everyone can keep crying about until the end of time, it won't change.


While writing this, I wonder why GNBs aren't more vocal about this super tight No Mercy window. As I understand, it's quite stressful to fit in everything during the buff. You'd think they'd ask for some QoL like ~3 seconds more or some part of this combo having a lower recast time... I thought this is precisely why they don't like to MT, if possible.

Ex-samurai main here, and fwiw, I've entirely stopped playing samurai due to the 6.1 changes.

As you say, they keep tabs on how many people are playing what classes, so if a large percentage of the samurai population puts down their katanas, they will notice.

At least it doesn't feel like a sacrifice to forego the job in the meantime since it's so bad right now that it isn't even tempting to play it.

I play Bard, Ninja, and Samurai. This has been suffering

This is one of the reasons why I have stopped playing current mnk, it was my main job since hw, was really excited to see the changes in ew from 5.4. But after the EW changes I can't even touch the job anymore. Everything that I loved about it has been stripped away along with the feeling that its a level 60 job at 90. Positionals being removed from opo-opo and raptor form, chakra overflow still not being addressed, even after it was brought up in the media tour. How boring the rotation is outside of your burst and the fact that the rotation doesn't even line up properly anymore. Just goes to show how lazy the rework was. If the devs were so concerned about positionals in your burst, why couldn't they just make perfect balance give you a true north effect that way those who liked positionals could still have them in the regular rotation while the burst being more casual friendly.

I sort of saw this happen with bard.

I hadn't picked it up at the time, but when heavensward dropped, a bunch of my bard friends quit sooner or later (mostly sooner) into the expansion. Of course the forums were all "Bards just need to git gud!" "Well I like bard cast times!" "Bard is fine, SE doesn't need to change anything" and so on. Not for a short time either - a whole 2 years.

But in the end, the horrible bard mage was eventually removed. So, in short yes, quitting a job can have that effect.

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That said, just as the forums can be biased in the example above, it can also go the other way. Summoner is a good example. From the forums you'd think summoner is a ruined, dead job. And yet... it's the second most popular DPS in casual content, and third most popular in raid/high-end content. A lot of people are enjoying it, so I wouldn't count on SE pumping the brakes and reverting to old summoner.

As for sam, we'll have to see, SE did say they'd revert if it proved very unpopular - nin's probably open to the same on the same basis. Healers, um... yeah I don't know about that one. SE just has communication on lockdown and clearly doesn't want to go the direction players want so it's very difficult to figure out pretty much anything.

But healers are also at an all time low for necessity - if a healer dies in a dungeon you just continue on without them, no big deal, and so on. So if a bunch of healers quit I wouldn't be surprised if SE just added pvp-levels of self healing to everyone.

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Originally Posted by YeBunny

This is one of the reasons why I have stopped playing current mnk, it was my main job since hw, was really excited to see the changes in ew from 5.4. But after the EW changes I can't even touch the job anymore.

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Exactly - MNK was my favorite job until I got SAM up to 80, but the 6.0 changes destroyed that job for me - went from one of my favorites to one of my least favorites, just like samurai just went from my absolute favorite by far to possibly least favorite overnight.

Whoever thought it was a good idea to take MNK OGCDs and put them on the GCD, lock them behind other skills, and drastically reduce the frequency that you could use them was as out of touch as whoever thought removing Kaiten and flattening SAM potency distribution was a good idea.

it isn't even like they're simply failing to make the jobs meaningfully better - we aren't getting side-grades - they're actively making the jobs drastically worse.

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Originally Posted by EhvaTaco

Physical ranged jobs have the amazing benefit of maximum uptime. Having lower damage output is a given. The devs simply need to up MCH numbers where necessary to compensate for the intended lack of party utility. That especially includes Wildfire, since it can't crit or d-hit. There's also odd jank like Flamethrower but the job isn't fundamentally broken. It has a clear design of big, hard hitting attacks and fast attack windows. It just needs some number turning and/or slight work.

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This is the excuse everyone uses because it's the excuse Yoshi-P has trained us to believe, but they keep designing fights that trivialize uptime on other jobs. P1S is 100% uptime, P2S doesn't even have positionals despite not being a wall boss. P3S is a little harder to keep uptime on, but easy enough to work around. P4S is the only fight this tier with mechanics that try to keep you off the boss. The recent EX3 is so ridiculously uptime friendly, you can literally accidentally aggro the boss only by slightly moving from the load-in point. They've added True North to the game since Stormblood, lowered punishment from missing positionals since Stormblood also, and have consistently removed positionals from actions. Black Mage gained an extra usage of Triplecast with no downside just from being 80, Red Mage gained potency on Engagement so it's no longer a loss instead of Displacement and gained an extension to their instant cast phase after melee, and Summoner was reworked to the extent that people joke about it being basically a physical ranged job at this point. There's no longer any reasonable excuse for physical ranged jobs to do lower damage, if there ever was.

So glad to see other mnk players here complaining about the job, because I felt like after the changes literally nobody said anything and just continued playing it. The job feels absolutely awful now, it used to be fun, fast, shiny and cool, now playing it feels like playing Tetris on the easiest difficulty - boring and braindead. It's so sad to see a job you've fell in love with be gutted to the ground. I really miss the old monk but oh well.

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Originally Posted by EhvaTaco

Physical ranged jobs have the amazing benefit of maximum uptime. Having lower damage output is a given.

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This is a fake fact and it needs to die.
In fact it needed to die during ShB.

Even when respecting mechanics, melees would miss 10-12 GCDs maximum. It's not enough to justify the gap between ranged and melees.
Don't forget that bosses now have massive hitbox and some even give all positionals for free, not tax, nothing.

We had unfriendly melee content (E5S to E8S), it was the casters who shined the most, not the ranged. RDM was near SAM level in E8S.
And that was the last tier with such mechanics, E9S to E12S were extremely generous with melee uptime, P1S to P4S were also generous and out of the 3 EX, 2 have hitbox that cover half the arena.

Mobility has never been more overrated that now.
Casters and melees are getting easier and easier but they never lost any DPS for it.

Also, that GNB 3 extra seconds? That would just add another GCD in the No mercy window.

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Originally Posted by Theox

So glad to see other mnk players here complaining about the job, because I felt like after the changes literally nobody said anything and just continued playing it. The job feels absolutely awful now

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Not to turn the thread into a MNK class lecture, but I only play SAM and I am BiS aside from one Twine, and MNK would be right up there to swap for and i even consider it. What happened to MNK if you don't mind me asking if its okey if you can tell me cause me only playing SAM i have no idea what happened to MNK

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Originally Posted by CelestiCer

Not to turn the thread into a MNK class lecture, but I only play SAM and I am BiS aside from one Twine, and MNK would be right up there to swap for and i even consider it. What happened to MNK if you don't mind me asking if its okey if you can tell me cause me only playing SAM i have no idea what happened to MNK

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Basically mnk was one of the last bastions of skill expression in the game with its positional heavy gameplay. It was a job for people who like to keep improving from fight to fight, it had a lot of ogcds while still being fast. It was a very niche job that go gutted in 5.4 with the removal of greased lightning management for the prep for a rework in EW. The media tour build was something that the mnk playerbase was willing to test, since we would have a new resource to manage (blitz) but it would come at the cost of removing positionals on twin snakes and true strike, as the devs said that it was because they were find that people were struggling to hit positionals in the burst. Fast-forward to EW launch and come to find out that they removed the dragon kick and bootshine positional requirements before we even got the chance to test it. This to a lot of long time mnk players (myself included) was a slap in the face as the rotation is incredibly boring without positionals between burst. Along with the fact that they turned a lot of our ogcds into gcds so that their is nothing to fill up the very long downtime between burst besides forbidden chakra, which is based on rng crits. This caused even more mnks to quit playing (as seen by the fflogs numbers, mnk is the 2nd least played job in the game at all levels of content).

Honestly, it's what I'm doing. I was a MCH since the start of the expansion and kept holding out hope for something to make the small fixes the job needed. After this patch I'm done with it. Switching to RDM, staying on MCH feels like I'm trolling my group and since we have a DNC in it as well it's a no brainer.

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Originally Posted by YeBunny

Basically mnk was one of the last bastions of skill expression in the game with its positional heavy gameplay.

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So that's why I kept hearing MNK positional memes... I am reading more into it from others. I don't even care about positional removals, it's just a meme I love hitting my positional skills and not needing to forcefully weave true north. It gave me an appreciation for Tanks as well who did their best to pull / drag / rotate / point the boss the correct direction to provide more damage output channeled through us the DPS that can make the most out of it. Gee, that's not exactly good to hear. MNK and SAM share gear I would just swap. And having a ton of MNK players quit doesn't sound great either.

Thank you for sharing with me, idk what I will play now honestly cause I have such issues finding what I enjoy, I don't know... yeah idk

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Originally Posted by CelestiCer

Not to turn the thread into a MNK class lecture, but I only play SAM and I am BiS aside from one Twine, and MNK would be right up there to swap for and i even consider it. What happened to MNK if you don't mind me asking if its okey if you can tell me cause me only playing SAM i have no idea what happened to MNK

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This is a simplification, but they implemented a cooldown that activates a combo window that enables a finisher, but as part of this change, they repurposed 2 OGCDs that monks already had to be used as [GCD] finishers, leaving monks with 2 fewer OGCDs and making the use of those flashy abilities less frequent on top of that.

I was in the same boat as you are in right now when I saw the mnk changes at EW launch, swapped to sam for 6.0 and now I have swapped to nin for 6.1 but still getting readjusted to the mug/trick change, which I don't really like either (please revert the trick change mug is so awkward to have as a raid buff)

Proper hot take but I love it. SAM could alternatively use the shinten/yukikaze meme rotation in priest so they realise how silly and not well thought out the changes were.

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Originally Posted by EhvaTaco

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Ok, a few things I like to say as an SMN main since SB. First off please show me one fight this tier or in EW where melee cant get uptime on? I know a few Eden fights was kinda hard on melees but the fact is in EW has made the job for a melee easier and easier in terms of keeping uptime. So movement isn't really a good utility and beings nothing to a party and the tax phy range has to pay for that is way too high. Even casters have an easier time. SMN is closer to a phy range, rdm only has to cast every other spell, and blm now has a lot more mobility than what it used to have. So this excuse of phy range has to tax for its full uptime is full a bull in today's ff14.

Now to your comments about smn... I'm glad you can find some fun in a job that basically plays itself. The issue people have with the rework of smn is that you are not given any meaningful choice or anything to manage when playing the job. All you really do is press the buttons when they light up and look at the pretty light show. Most of the other jobs at least have to think a little when it comes to a fight and during their rotation. All smn has to know is what order to summon its primals and you can easily figure that out in one or two pulls. It's fine to have a low skill floor but the problem with smn is that it has no skill ceiling, its floor and ceiling are the same. That is not good job design and always leads to ppl to complaining and getting upset. Another issue of smn is the fact it plays like a lvl 50 or 60 job. The job feels hollowed and unfinished. It feels like devs ran out of time, which if you read the interviews and listen to Yoshi P talk about the job design leading up to EW you can easily come to the conclusion they did ran out of time for smn and maybe a few other jobs. Did I think smn needed a rework? yes but I rather had a finished rework and have a job that is well designed than a rushed unfinished rework that we got. Also the "promise" of we will get more in 7.0 isn't enough for me to believe. Mch said the same thing in 5.0 and look what they got this expac, an upgrade aoe button, one new queen attack, and one new button you press every 2 mins. SMN has always felt like the dev never cared about it. They put more time and thought into blm(yoshi p main btw) than they do smn. So I have no hope they will address the flaws and issues this rework has and till they show me something otherwise or at least talk about smn in a LL I'm not going to believe they will listen to us smn mains. By the way, I think it speaks volumes about the smn rework when the pvp rework is better and is a lot more fun to play than its pve version.

Yes, PLD went from 3 button combo + flash to this much better rotation. Now classes like SAM get dunked on. Just play the latest expansion class or BLM and the game will be fine I guess...

I am a former physical ranged main (BRD in HW and SB, DNC in ShB), and a current healer main that has played the healers almost as long as I’ve played this game (SGE, primarily, but I play all four). So I am very well versed in salty rage and apathy. Here’s a bit of my own experience when it comes to FFXIV:

I unironically liked bowmage. Probably because it was the BRD I learned to play when I started this game in HW. I found it interesting, but I loved the SB changes much more. I had fun playing the job. And I feel like I was at least fairly decent at it. Then ShB came and stripped away the aspects I enjoyed, and I dropped it. Even now, I still think about the previous iterations that I enjoyed far more than the ShB version of BRD—and my EW play, while it has been more than it was in ShB, still leaves a lot to be desired.

Despite not touching MCH much (although I did enjoy HW MCH a bit), I’ve acknowledged that the job is the red-headed step child of the physical ranged. It seems like most MCH mains here and on other platforms have just descended into pure, self-deprecating apathy, and have accepted that their job is destined to always be in the shadow of the other two. Which is sad and should never be the case. That it has such little representation when it comes to high-end content is the only thing that might save it because I am positive the developers look at The Website That Shall Not Be Named, even if they don’t want to admit it. But there is still a part of me that is skeptical the site and what data it shows could save MCH.

The healers…well I’m an old AST boomer. Loved the job in HW and SB. Loved the card system. The Time Mage aspects. The dual sects even if Nocturnal Sect was always inferior to Diurnal. Loved everything about it. The only thing that kept me playing it in ShB after they butchered the cards and in EW is its healing kit. Otherwise, it’s a shadow of the job I loved.

WHM was my go-to healer for learning new stuff due to its low maintenance and high recovery, but that didn’t mean it didn’t have it’s problems in the past; the 6.1 changes, while some are appreciated, they are band-aids at best and do not address the real issues.

SCH is my healer I play the least, but I’ve always acknowledged the sort of anti-synergy its kit has, and the clunkiness of the Fairy. SGE is fun, but it’s no less interesting than WHM. I’m on auto-pilot when I play it—and that really goes for all of them.

All four healers are basically the same job with a different coat of paint. None require an extensive amount of thought outside of card optimization on AST, which isn’t necessary unless you want to chase leaderboards. We are healers in name only because we sure as heck aren’t spending most of our time in content healing. We spend it pressing our 1 damage nuke 100 to 150 times in a given encounter. And any requests to address the lack of healing we do or to improve the DPS gameplay aspects are blatantly ignored. I eagerly watched the Q&A PLL hoping they would answer one of the myriad of questions that was about healer gameplay, and I was thoroughly disappointed by the flippant and dismissive answer given. I’m even more abashed that my fears were confirmed, and healers in general are designed around players that struggle to progress through the simplest of content, since the good healer on the team was “replaced” because they did Extremes and were “too good”. Like what????

Healers are the only role in this game that rely heavily on their party being a clown fiesta to feel a sense of engagement, versus getting it from their gameplay. They are the only role that gets more boring and more unneeded the better one’s party is.

Why does that have to remain the case? Why do I have to basically do 24-man alliance raids on Day 1 to feel like I’m an actual healer? To feel that engagement and rush playing my role? Why can’t I feel that rush in Extremes? Or Savage (outside of week 1 progression)? I felt it a bit when I cleared UCoB on AST, but that was the first Ultimate I cleared on a healer, so it was to be expected. The reality is that I still spent most of my time dealing damage compared to healing.



I’m rambling a bit talking about my past experience in this game, so I’ll get to the point. I think everyone probably understands the full extent of my salt now.

Not playing a job has worked in the past. At least with regards to certain DPS jobs. 5.0 NIN had extremely low representation on The Website That Shall Not Be Named, and, as a result, it was adjusted in 5.1. BRD did receive a lot of backlash for its 3.0 iteration—but it still took the developers an entire expansion to rectify that. AST has always had low play counts, but they were the lowest after the launch of ShB when the AST playerbase was so divisive on the ShB job changes. Plus, its mana economy was absolute crap, and they still had to wait until 5.3 to get adjustments to that. The only credit I can give is that the developers at least upped the healing potencies prior to Eden’s Gate launch. ShB launch AST was so bad in terms of healing potency it bordered on HW launch levels of bad—where the job was literally unplayable.

However, other jobs such as DRK and the healers have consistently brought up issues in the past, and have been ignored. It took DRK 6+ years to get Living Dead addressed. Despite constant complaints about it from the NA side. Healers have been a pile of salt since SB, but they aren’t even acknowledged. When they are, the most they get are potency adjustments and mana cost adjustments. Since late HW when the SB Media Tour rolled out, WHMs expressed their criticism of the SB Lily System, and were promptly told to “just wait until the expansion comes out and try it”. Expansion comes out, Lilies still suck. “Just wait until Savage.” “Just wait until our new Ultimate mode.” “Just wait until Shadowbringers.” Even DRK got told in 4.3 that “major changes to it” would have to wait until ShB…

Meanwhile, there are jobs that have consistently always been designed well. It’s no secret that BLM is one of those, and the theories as to why seem more and more sound the more I consider them…



In all, I think the idea is a decent one in theory. If all healer mains suddenly up and left the role, I do think that they might finally get a chance to speak on the stage about what the problems are and be heard. It’s just not one that feasibly practical.

Too many people are either ignorant on the problems or simply don’t care enough to drop the jobs. I think this is one reason why WHM has suffered for so long: it’s always had high play counts despite the issues and complaints, and WHMs that don’t care to look into the job too deeply “fail to see the problem” with it. Even education doesn’t seem to help, with them usually still opting to play it. And who knows. Maybe they enjoy it. But I don’t think enjoyment necessarily means that the issues surrounding healers (primarily that we are basically gimped damage dealers and not healers) deserve to be ignored.

I’m honestly shocked that, despite the backlash surrounding the SAM and NIN changes that the developers still went through with them. I guess they were just “too finalized” to walk back, but there has never been an instance where all three regions were unanimous in their complaints. Even JP was demanding to know why these changes were made. It makes me wonder if they will be reversed in 6.2.


Anyways, TL;DR—sound idea in theory that has worked in the past. Just impractical. I wish it was simple to just drop jobs en masse to draw attention to the issues, but it isn’t. So I guess I have no choice but to either continue shouting into the wind my complaints, or just be like most MCH mains and drown myself in self-deprecating apathy while I spam Glare/Malefic/Broil/Dosis 100+ times in a fight until my X button on my controller breaks and I have to replace it again.

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Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Anyways, TL;DR—sound idea in theory that has worked in the past. Just impractical. I wish it was simple to just drop jobs en masse to draw attention to the issues, but it isn’t. So I guess I have no choice but to either continue shouting into the wind my complaints, or just be like most MCH mains and drown myself in self-deprecating apathy while I spam Glare/Malefic/Broil/Dosis 100+ times in a fight until my X button on my controller breaks and I have to replace it again.

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Yeah. Honestly this is the main reason this started to just devolve into me only being half serious. Getting everyone on board with this is just completely impractical. I feel like I could repost this 10000 times and get nothing, not because it lacks traction, but just due to the conventions of the game and how I genuinely can't get a big enough portion of the playerbase on board. Which is a frustration. I like FFXIV a lot. And I want it to be it's best self. We are not in the best self state rn.

And for what it's worth, I fall under the SMN doomposters. I looked forward to them fixing the pet jank. Oh I got a fix alright. I got a lobotomy. They could have completely remade the job in any other way and I'd be pleased but current smn is just....lifeless to me. As others have said there's really no skill ceiling. There's no job complexity, no gauge management, no resource generation.... I can play the job with my eyes closed because over a 60s period I'll be pressing the same buttons with no resources to manage and like I said, I'm not a great player. So it's saying something that I feel I could pretty confidently play through my whole rotation. But it's been met with such resounding player numbers that I've got nothing. Maybe these are just people eager to dig into the job and check it out. We'll see them die down in a patch or two. Or maybe these are genuine enjoyers of the job which.... is a double edged sword. I'm glad that technically people are enjoying the job, but encouraging that design path... Big no from me.

I stopped playing Samurai due to the 6.1 changes. Just got back into it a month ago after beating Endwalker and felt like I really got good at it. Now I'm leveling up Black Mage as a replacement to Samurai. I can't play a job class that's supposed to be all about kaiten usage to achieve big damage and now without it, hits like a wet noodle and feels terrible to boot. And the Shinten spam... *shivers*.

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Originally Posted by MrJPtheAssassin

Ok, a few things I like to say as an SMN main since SB. First off please show me one fight this tier or in EW where melee cant get uptime on?

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Rather mood question, when the first tier of every expansion is specifically designed to be easier, so everyone can get better used to the new changes.

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Originally Posted by EhvaTaco

Rather mood question, when the first tier of every expansion is specifically designed to be easier, so everyone can get better used to the new changes.

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not really, even the 1st tier of Eden wasn't the most melee friendly, the 1st 2 tiers were really rough on melees in general.
I'm all in for them designing fights and mechanics so that melee can get uptime, nothing more frustrating than having to disengage and wait for 2-3 GCDs because the boss decided to screw with you specifically.
That's why I kinda like the design around P2S, no positionals, an actual unique arena (still square, but it gets shrank down a lot) and it became more for mechanics than keeping the boss faced north at all times.
The main issue becomes when everyone justifies the physical ranged DPS tax because of their free movement (and i get it to an extent) but then we have fights where melee's generally don't lose uptime, which is the main driving point for the DPS tax.

Just hope they go somewhere with this instead of going into the same direction and be like "the 3rd fight is an prog stopper, please look forward to it" while e11s where he said that it was an prog stopper and the only thing that made it an prog stopper was the DPS check, it was basically an "see this mechanic? yeah, i'll be using that a lot" fun fight, but was called an prog stopper for the wrong reasons.

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Originally Posted by EhvaTaco

Rather mood question, when the first tier of every expansion is specifically designed to be easier, so everyone can get better used to the new changes.

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The first tier are easier in the way they have a more lenient DPS check, not mechanic wise.
E10S was much easier than E2S, both being second floor of their respective tier.

Even Ultimate wise, bosses disappear then reappear between every mechanic.
In TEA, melees had near full uptime and ironically, the ranged had to do the most work.

"It's not a problem that SMN has a low skill ceiling"
"You have to find a right balance in all things"

Teehee, I like how braindead SMN is now, go cry somehwere else if you don't.

Balance :rolleyes:

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Originally Posted by EhvaTaco

Rather mood question, when the first tier of every expansion is specifically designed to be easier, so everyone can get better used to the new changes.

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As few others have said that doesn't really matter when it comes to mechanics, only dps checks. I remember my static melees complaining about some fights in E1-E4s so just because its the first tier of a raid means nothing. Also, you sound a whole lot like yoshi p right now when he gave his answer to the healer question in the LL. Next, you will be telling us to just do ultimates if we want more challenging content. I will be honest I love yoshi p but he has always up saled how hard fights are and they never are that hard. He said endsinger ex was going to be closer to a savage level fight but it really isn't that hard of a fight, I saw all the mechs in one lockout last night. So I kinda doubt the next tier of savage will be that much harder than this tier mechanic-wise, dps check most likely be harder but not the mechanics.

If a jobs changes are as bad as you say, then people WILL stop playing it, and SE WILL notice.

If that's not happening, chances are players are more or less content or apathetic to it, and there's nothing you can do to change that.

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Originally Posted by Seraphor

If a jobs changes are as bad as you say, then people WILL stop playing it, and SE WILL notice.

If that's not happening, chances are players are more or less content or apathetic to it, and there's nothing you can do to change that.

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I'd Normally agree with you. But I keep seeing threads of people who feel locked in the job for a tier because of their gear or their static needs them in that spot. Or, unironically look at healers. You still get DF pops but there is clearly a lot of dissatisfaction there. DRK suffered for six years apparently for like 2 changes? And it still had a dedicated playerbase. Many of which still did not like the jobs state. (Source: The DRK megathread) People will keep blindly playing that job even if they don't like it for a variety of reasons. Hell, that was me. I played summoner for over a month, and had even convinced myself I was having fun. Until I opened my eyes. I didn't watch some video. I didn't get convinced by some other player. I just stopped fooling myself into believing the job would be something better sooner or later. So while in the micro I believe you're right and there's no reason to make a point... in the macro. People still play these jobs they are dissatisfied with. Same reason people stick around at *actual* jobs they are dissatisfied with.

Also. I wanna focus for a second on one particular portion.

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If a jobs changes are as bad as you say, then people WILL stop playing it, and SE WILL notice.

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I wanna focus on that you portion. This isn't me. I don't play most of these jobs. These are things I pieced together from other players. The people that actually played the job. The ones with the actual complaints. Now if we're talking about SMN. Yes. I'm Doomposting. I don't like new SMN. I like the idea behind it's design path even less. And I think SMN contributes to some of the concern players have because they feel like their job is next on the operating table. Maybe more slowly, maybe over several patches, but I've had several people cite to me that they feel like SMN is the path every job (except BLM) is destined for at this point.

I think YoshiP himself actively listens to feedback and actually plays the game. Unfortunately, the same cannot necessarily be said for the rest of the development team, especially when it comes to job design. For some of them, it feels like they don't even play the jobs they are in charge of and actively disregard feedback. While it probably isn't perfect all the time, I doubt BLM will ever get in the same state of the disrepair as other jobs, since YoshiP mains it and probably will not tolerate it if it gets that bad (feel free to correct me on this, I don't play Black Mage).

Let's look at the recent SAM changes and the sh*tstorm that came of them as an example. If you actively play the job you could at least see why the changes why the changes might mess with the job's identity, its underlying systems, its desirability in high-end content or its general enjoyment. However, when the developers in charge of SAM, who seemingly don't even play the job, sent the 6.1 changes for approval, Yoshida, who also doesn't play SAM, probably looked at them and thought: "Some numbers were shifted around and some random ability was removed. DPS is basically the same so should be fine.". This may be a reasonable assessment if you don't actually play the job, but given the current state of the DPS forums in all regions the situation isn't exactly that simple.

Unless we manage to force YoshiP to regularly play every single job in the game, the only sustainable solution seems to be to make the people behind each of the changes personally come out and publicly explain the actual reasoning behind job changes. It shouldn't even be that hard, they are supposed to be professionals and should at least be able to argue why their changes are good for the game.

For full disclosure, yes, I am a long-time SAM main. Well..., at least I used to be until 6.1. It's now become so boring that I don't even feel like touching the job.

lol monk has regularly been the least played or second least played job in the game since stormblood and look where it has gotten monk. Still one of the least played jobs in the game despite being the best performing job number-wise in the current savage tier. Not playing a job isn't going to get them to fix it, they'll just find a way to make it feel even worse to play like they've done with monk.

The only time I can recall them reverting a terrible change was energy drain with scholar. The devs generally don't care about players that miss previous iterations of jobs. They'll just look for ways to dumb down the job even more.

dont have to tell me twice, my sam is shelved indefinitely

did the same to DRK too after i got both tank mounts, gonna have to dust it off soon

i actually think i have not run into a single sam since 6.1 in DF content or savage PF reclears even, my static melee DPS member ditched it too

out of curiosity i glanced through PF randomly to see if there r any sams, i did see a few, hopefully they will realise whats up soon enough

I think the SMN issues are twofold, not only is the class not enjoyable to play, but it doesn’t feel like there is any room for any job progression come 7.0

It’s concerning

To be honest, I didn't dislike the 80-90 MCH change.

They added one button, sure. But that button, Chainsaw, changes your reassemble priorities (since reassemble has 2 charges now). And allows you to call Queen on opener, due to the extra battery. Moreover, the extended combo period in 6.X makes the class more flexible, killing your combo only if you enter three hyper charge sequences in a row. And since the queen has more finishers now, calling her preemptively and making them fall within buffs gets you nice dmg.

Problem with MCH was there from before, and is still class identity, low damage, dependence in AI and ping dependence. Skill ceiling is too low for all the freedom it's given. Wildfire is not rewarding at all when it should be a gamble, and cannot crit or DH. Lack of queen interactivity is meh and doesn't synergize with other stuff in MCHs toolkit. And the hyper charge ping situation is terrible, to be honest.

Would love to see a MCH where the rotational complexity of the class increases while keeping its mobility, so a higher skill ceiling to allow for higher damage while still being mobile, to become a proper selfish dps.

A selfish dps where its complexity lies not in positional requirements, being in melee range or not moving, but in optimizing the rotation and its resources properly.

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Originally Posted by Thi

Honestly, it's what I'm doing. I was a MCH since the start of the expansion and kept holding out hope for something to make the small fixes the job needed. After this patch I'm done with it. Switching to RDM, staying on MCH feels like I'm trolling my group and since we have a DNC in it as well it's a no brainer.

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Are you me? This is exactly what I've done. I was holding on by a thread until I saw the pathetic bone they threw us in 6.1 and now I've gone RDM and I'm not looking back.

Current job design makes me lose hope for the future of this game, I'm wondering if I should bail now or stay and watch the game go to shit like so many other before it...