Jobs need Status Ailments, Buffs and Debuffs back!

Just going to throw this out here. Most of them were removed back during the tail end of Heavensward. Back then, I thought it was a terrible idea because...well, look at the state of job classes now. All of them have an over focus on just attacking and no genuine ability to affect the course of a fight besides occasionally adding a measly attack/defense boost and cutting down on the time you can hit an enemy again.

Ninja is really the last Job that even provides a genuine debuff to an enemy, and it's Vulnerability. That's it.

Jobs need something more to them than what they have right now. Bringing back Buffs, debuffs and status ailments would provide much needed identity and better diversity in gameplay.

Think about it!

https://imgs.search.brave.com/-57TiR...hfM2l3Yi5q/cGc

I'd be down for it.

I've been saying this for years, and I'm glad I'm not the only one.

With your system, some jobs are meant to play together (consider dragoon and bard in 3.x times). People eventually will adhere to this standard, cause who doesn't like faster kill time. Even with today's buffing system, just look at how many non-raid-buff jobs are in speed run. I'm talking about you - MACHINIST

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by iGiveUpLoL

With your system, some jobs are meant to play together (consider dragoon and bard in 3.x times). People eventually will adhere to this standard, cause who doesn't like faster kill time. Even with today's buffing system, just look at how many non-raid-buff jobs are in speed run. I'm talking about you - MACHINIST

---

No matter what the devs do, there will always be a meta of sorts for which jobs are best to take in to do [Insert Name] type of content.

Even today certain jobs are still picked over others due to how well they synergize with another or what utility they bring.

However, for this problem, the Slash, Pierce and Blunt (lol!) ailment, it would be best to just make that an all encompassing Vulnerability debuff. Which is what we already have with Ninja's Mug.Though, it would be nice if a few other classes had that ability, too.

I'll take anything over this copy paste bs we have now.

Rip Apocatastasis and Addle

The problem with certain jobs applying debuffs that synergize with certain other jobs is that it makes you want to exclude other jobs from the party.

The problem with a paladin applying a physical damage down when doing Rage of Halone was that Rage of Halone was sub-optimal and most bosses did magic damage. There was a boss that did a lot of heavy physical damage where I actually used it though and a certain tank buster where it could help.

I'm not certain which status ailments you mean. If we could silence, stun or paralyze a raid boss, it would be overpowered because we could interrupt the worst mechanics. We still sometimes have to use the replacement for silence (interrupt). We still have dots which is the same thing as a poison. We still have a form of damage reduction with reprisal, feint and addle.

I would not want to go back to the way Reprisal used to be, where it was locked behind a few layers of RNG so that it was never available when you actually wanted it. Back in Heavensward I dreamed of Reprisal working the way it does now.

I would not want to go back to where Spirits Within was a silence, because I want to use that for damage.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

The problem with certain jobs applying debuffs that synergize with certain other jobs is that it makes you want to exclude other jobs from the party.

The problem with a paladin applying a physical damage down when doing Rage of Halone was that Rage of Halone was sub-optimal and most bosses did magic damage. There was a boss that did a lot of heavy physical damage where I actually used it though and a certain tank buster where it could help.

I'm not certain which status ailments you mean. If we could silence, stun or paralyze a raid boss, it would be overpowered because we could interrupt the worst mechanics. We still sometimes have to use the replacement for silence (interrupt). We still have dots which is the same thing as a poison. We still have a form of damage reduction with reprisal, feint and addle.

I would not want to go back to the way Reprisal used to be, where it was locked behind a few layers of RNG so that it was never available when you actually wanted it. Back in Heavensward I dreamed of Reprisal working the way it does now.

I would not want to go back to where Spirits Within was a silence, because I want to use that for damage.

---

That is a problem with their design and not strictly the effects themselves. You can already say exclusion happens to some extent right now, there always will be no matter what you do.

I agree, the effects that directly interfere with your rotation when rotations is what this game is about was a bad way to go about it.

Status ailments used to play an important role to help delay certain raid wipes or ease checks. You can argue this created a problem where certain jobs were mandatory, but that's already enforced somewhat through current design. To add, all roles had them added across the board to resolve this, yet they just forego CC altogether with recent tiers. I don't think anyone is asking to be able to CC the boss whenever you want, it would have to be key moments or the helpers it summons. Interrupts are a shadow of what we used to have, they aren't even utilized now with the latest tier.

I don't disagree with reprisal. The damage reductions are another problem that eats into healer and tank design.

only if their applied to current abilities cause we really dont need anymore buttons to press

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

The problem with certain jobs applying debuffs that synergize with certain other jobs is that it makes you want to exclude other jobs from the party.

The problem with a paladin applying a physical damage down when doing Rage of Halone was that Rage of Halone was sub-optimal and most bosses did magic damage. There was a boss that did a lot of heavy physical damage where I actually used it though and a certain tank buster where it could help.

I'm not certain which status ailments you mean. If we could silence, stun or paralyze a raid boss, it would be overpowered because we could interrupt the worst mechanics. We still sometimes have to use the replacement for silence (interrupt). We still have dots which is the same thing as a poison. We still have a form of damage reduction with reprisal, feint and addle.

I would not want to go back to the way Reprisal used to be, where it was locked behind a few layers of RNG so that it was never available when you actually wanted it. Back in Heavensward I dreamed of Reprisal working the way it does now.

I would not want to go back to where Spirits Within was a silence, because I want to use that for damage.

---

Then just make sure every job has a partner job it pairs with, then you can't complain about exclusion. But of course some parties will exclude some jobs but they already do.

they kind of decided they don't want synergies at all and are going strong with it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by KurohNeko

Then just make sure every job has a partner job it pairs with, then you can't complain about exclusion. But of course some parties will exclude some jobs but they already do.

---

The easiest way to fix this is just to become good at more than one job. We can play every job class on a single character, after all.

Also, having jobs that are basically made to sync with one another would probably cause more problems.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Soge01

Just going to throw this out here. Most of them were removed back during the tail end of Heavensward. Back then, I thought it was a terrible idea because...well, look at the state of job classes now. All of them have an over focus on just attacking and no genuine ability to affect the course of a fight besides occasionally adding a measly attack/defense boost and cutting down on the time you can hit an enemy again.

Ninja is really the last Job that even provides a genuine debuff to an enemy, and it's Vulnerability. That's it.

Jobs need something more to them than what they have right now. Bringing back Buffs, debuffs and status ailments would provide much needed identity and better diversity in gameplay.

Think about it!

https://imgs.search.brave.com/-57TiR...hfM2l3Yi5q/cGc

---

It's not gonna come back. Devs have chosen homogeneity over variation. Everyone is a hero!

So, would it really change anything if every job suddenly has all of these Synergies? Wouldnt it still be more the same like we have now, just extra buttons/Effects?
Or are we advocating for Meta to come back, and a handful of jobs become the only way to play content again and every other job gets the boot for the sake of these "identities"?

In my mind I see nothing but a Lose/Lose.
Jobs will either start suffering and under performing because other jobs revived Meta. Leading to unhappy players that aren't allowed to play because their chosen/favorite job doesn't meet Meta. hen there is the issue that their jobs slot got taken so we need X job, but that person doesn't play said job.
Or nothing will really change because once again everyone can do everything the same way, so you just brought in more buttons or just more effects.

Maybe Im overthinking this, or not thinking about it the right way.

Players complained because they felt " dot/debuff" Anxiety and SE removed it leaving almost every single job play the same.

If you mean things like slashing/piercing debuff, then no, those are very bad. They're not neat little bonuses that give more variation to jobs, they're crutches that kneecap the DPS of entire roles if you don't bring them along. If you mean things like old Rage of Halone, Reprisal (the effect, not the skill itself), etc, then sure, yeah, I can get behind that, although I know they can fuck with raid design so it's not very likely.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

The problem with a paladin applying a physical damage down when doing Rage of Halone was that Rage of Halone was sub-optimal and most bosses did magic damage. There was a boss that did a lot of heavy physical damage where I actually used it though and a certain tank buster where it could help

---

IMO that wsnt a problem with Paladin but more a problem with encounter design.. if more bosses dealt physical damage then paladin would have been fine. It was the same with blocks only working on physical hits.

The problem is no diversity in monster types.. every mob has the same strengths same weaknesses etc..

If you created a solid diverse bestiary you'd go a long way to eliminate meta. Here's a fight were blunt damage rules.. here's a fight where its not so good. Here's a fight where magic damage rules. Here's a fight where its not so good..

The issue earlier content and raid tiers and stuff had was the exact same comp was basically the best in every single encounter..

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Dzian

IMO that wsnt a problem with Paladin but more a problem with encounter design.. if more bosses dealt physical damage then paladin would have been fine. It was the same with blocks only working on physical hits.

The problem is no diversity in monster types.. every mob has the same strengths same weaknesses etc..

If you created a solid diverse bestiary you'd go a long way to eliminate meta. Here's a fight were blunt damage rules.. here's a fight where its not so good. Here's a fight where magic damage rules. Here's a fight where its not so good..

The issue earlier content and raid tiers and stuff had was the exact same comp was basically the best in every single encounter..

---

If those varied bosses followed each other in a single instance I would have agreed with your point. But raiding in XIV is confined to individual arena fights. People would just switch jobs for different floors and that doesn't sound like fun at all.

I wouldn't be on board with bringing back Slashing/Piercing/Blunt damage, it was way too niche and finickity to optimise synergies, and yes you literally needed degree level maths to work it all out properly.

But we still have Magical and Physical damage. Instead of getting rid of this, they need to go all in on it. Give Magical and Physical damage types more direct feedback (maybe different colours for floating text damage numbers, and/or different coloured cast bars) then we can expand things like Dark Mind, give more weight and context to Addle and Feint, and give WHM Shell and Protect again.

Have my bump! ^^

It's a double edged sword. I'd be fine more class identity than balanced classes as long as it is fun. But raiders probably disagree and the combat is balanced them in mind and the people who don't want to bother at all.

I don't believe you can have balance and unique class toolkit in the same sentence

So, no examples of what you want? Just saying 'more buffs/debuffs' doesn't tell me anything. Are these on a cooldown, are they part of your rotation etc. With such a vague OP, it is hard to know exactly what you are trying to achieve.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

If we could silence, stun or paralyze a raid boss, it would be overpowered because we could interrupt the worst mechanics.

---

Can you clarify why this would be overpowered?

You know, back before the homogenization and dumbing down of everything, RPGs had very carefully designed bosses that you needed to use all your abilities, your team's abilities, and your team's synergy to defeat and you know what? We were all fine. We all turned out a-ok. In fact, that's literally the history and heritage of these games going back to the original game on NES. This idea that we can't have classic RPG abilities because they would be overpowered really is just saying that the dev team is not skilled enough to design a challenging encounter around them.

Now that, well that's a real concern. And frankly it's one that they have been trying to solve by just adding more and more 'dancing'. The sheer amount of movement in some of these fights is absolutely silly. It's artificial difficulty. There's no real strategy, the encounters are literally all about how well you can keep pressing buttons while moving your character and remembering the dance.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Azuri

If those varied bosses followed each other in a single instance I would have agreed with your point. But raiding in XIV is confined to individual arena fights. People would just switch jobs for different floors and that doesn't sound like fun at all.

---

To be honest even if they didn't it would be fine. Failing that they could just do a potd style save system where you kill 1 tier. And use that save to enter the next..

But honestly sounds more fun than now where final Fantasy xiv. The game where you can play every job on one character but every job is exactly the same anyway.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Souljacker

You know, back before the homogenization and dumbing down of everything, RPGs had very carefully designed bosses that you needed to use all your abilities, your team's abilities, and your team's synergy to defeat and you know what? We were all fine. We all turned out a-ok. In fact, that's literally the history and heritage of these games going back to the original game on NES. This idea that we can't have classic RPG abilities because they would be overpowered really is just saying that the dev team is not skilled enough to design a challenging encounter around them.

---

Whats funny about this is SE are obsessed with turning the game into a single player experience to try and draw in players who have played the single player games.. but absolutely none of these elements that made the single players games what they were exist in XIV they've all been hollowed out and dumbed down to hell.

and it just makes it boring. endwalker pulled in some new players into my fc and not one still plays because omg its so boring... and theres friends in other fcs that have said much the same thing. even in a fc leaders linkshell im in it's been said a lot..

if you wantt o pull in the fans of single player games you need to build on the things that made the single player games great not dumb them tf down.. strengths weaknesses, diversity, between monsters bosses and jobs, buffs debuffs, even the elemental wheel. a staple of the final fantasy franchise...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Mikey_R

So, no examples of what you want? Just saying 'more buffs/debuffs' doesn't tell me anything. Are these on a cooldown, are they part of your rotation etc. With such a vague OP, it is hard to know exactly what you are trying to achieve.

---

I'm not the best when it comes to explaining things, especially in great detail. But I'll do my best to update my original post. xD

But to answer your post at the moment, certain jobs should have buffs, debuffs and status ailments integrated into their current rotation, along with a a small handful of abilities that can be used off hand that are on cooldown, but wouldn't interrupt your attack rotation as a consequence of using said abilities. Though, this obviously depends on the type of Job these three different sets of things should be integrated with.

For example, jobs like Samurai or Black Mage, should be able to function by almost solely focusing on just attacking, while maybe one thing they could use to save themselves or a party in case something goes wrong.

One thing I'm thankful the devs left on Black Mage from 2.0 was our ability to still put an entire group of trash mobs to sleep for a time. While recently leveling Black Mage on my main character, I had to use that ability to save either myself or what remained of my party after the Tank died a few times in Duty Finder.

In the case of Samurai, it'd be neat to see Third Eye get changed into something similar to Reaper's Arcane Crest, being an actual barrier that allows the user to absorb a small amount of damage and if it breaks, grants the Samurai a temporary attack boost and regan, alongside it still being able to fill up the Kenki gauge some.

While with a Job like Bard, it should be balanced around being able to provide an equal amount of buffs, debuffs and status ailments alongside its usual ability to attack, though its attack power being lowered as a result of being able to heavily provide multiple avenues of utility.

Meanwhile, Dancer could focus more on a balance of just attacking and buffing, like it already does. With maybe one or two debuff capabilities (like that Charm ability in PVP) and an increase in it's ability to mitigate damage and heal its party.

And Machinist could focus on just attacking and providing status ailments of various sorts. Changing Bioblaster to have a longer damage overtime effect, along with being able to apply Slow and Heavy to enemies it hits. Flamethrower being changed into a second damage over time. Giving Scattergun the ability to temporarily stun groups of enemies (when you don't have a White Mage in your party) and making abilities like Drill and Chain Saw be linked with eachother and provide a vulnerability effect, Drill to a single target and Chainsaw to a group of enemies. While Queen Automata could be change to instantly charge at an enemy while having its whole standing and crouching animation completely stripped from it to get rid of some of its jankiness, while also giving you the ability to command it to attack either a single target or a group of enemies and give it the bonus effect of temporarily taking all enmity you generated onto it, acting as your punching bag, while not being able to strip enmity from a tank; always purposely being lower than a Tank's (unless the tank is terrible or has too low level gear).

Meanwhile, Peloton, our group role ability for all range dps, could be redesigned to allow all three range dps to provide temporary instant increased in movement not only outside of a fight, but also in it, too. But since Scholar has Expedient, I think the easiest solution to when you have a ranged dps and this Healer on the same party is to allow them to stack their movement speed buffs together, so one won't overwrite or invalidate the other. Or just make Pelotan's movement speed boost in a fight a 5% increase instead of a 10 so it won't overshadow Scholar's Expedient in the increase movement speed department. xD

As a long-time WAR player, I'd support this 100%. Give me back my Skull Sunder.

Also, while I'm here... how about making it a thing to use the potion slot for things other than just small stat buffs? How about using Antidotes/Spine Drops/whatever to cure otherwise unhealable status ailments? Elemental Ward potions to survive certain raidwides? Status Resistance gear? Anything to spice up the game's combat without relying solely on fight-specific mechanics.

Wouldn't hold my breath about any of these requests going through, though. They've stated their reasons for simplifying combat/getting rid of debuffs, and there's probably very little chance of them ever reintroducing them. Not after going through so much trouble to remove all of them slowly so less people would notice.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Wind-Krysvein

As a long-time WAR player, I'd support this 100%. Give me back my Skull Sunder.

Also, while I'm here... how about making it a thing to use the potion slot for things other than just small stat buffs? How about using Antidotes/Spine Drops/whatever to cure otherwise unhealable status ailments? Elemental Ward potions to survive certain raidwides? Status Resistance gear? Anything to spice up the game's combat without relying solely on fight-specific mechanics.

Wouldn't hold my breath about any of these requests going through, though. They've stated their reasons for simplifying combat/getting rid of debuffs, and there's probably very little chance of them ever reintroducing them. Not after going through so much trouble to remove all of them slowly so less people would notice.

---

Maybe Skull Sunder could be placed back onto Warrior as a completely different functioning move. Like, it could be changed into a second Stun ability or cause Parlysis along with a Bleed effect. Since it's called "Skull Sunder", I thought something like that would be perfect for it, lol!

Ooh! That would be a great addition to providing more use to potions! It'd also be cool if stat boosting potions could last more than just a couple of seconds but be more like food boosters and last from 30 minutes to an hour.

Honestly, I feel the same way. But if the devs don't do something to pull themselves out of the downward spiral they're setting themselves up in with all these homogenization changes, they're going to eventually wind up scaring off not only veterans, but casuals and newer players as well.

The housing system and the Samurai changes are a great example of them making terrible decisions, both in the past and now. Housing from the start should have been just instanced, while eventually providing small wards for single and FCs players that want a more neighborhood setting for their house.

And Samurai...the job was basically perfect before. Its bottom bloat issues, like many other job classes, were as a result of having too many skills/abilities that basically provided the same effect in a fight Getting rid of Kaiten was a terrible idea. And really, the only ability that shouldn't have even been linked to it was Ogi Namikari. Thst skill should have been instead linked to Kaeshi Namikiri and Kaeshi Setsugekka as an extra big final finishing move.

Anyone remember FFXI?
If you weren't a specific job with specific gear and spells (yes most of the skills/spells had to be puchased) you were excluded from content.
Where do you think 'lolDRG' originated?

If jobs were given unique skills which are better than others, then it would exclude them from content beacuse "it's not meta"

It's the players playstyle that killed job individuality.
SE is just trying to not have a repeat of FFXI problems.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tyjacon

Anyone remember FFXI?
If you weren't a specific job with specific gear and spells (yes most of the skills/spells had to be puchased) you were excluded from content.
Where do you think 'lolDRG' originated?

If jobs were given unique skills which are better than others, then it would exclude them from content beacuse "it's not meta"

It's the players playstyle that killed job individuality.
SE is just trying to not have a repeat of FFXI problems.

---

Yeah i Played FFXI for many years. maybe 10..

LOL drg originated from the dragoons 2hour ability.. and the loss of the wyvern for 2 hours if they died. absolutely crippling it. nothing to do with how unique it was.

jobs being excluded from content was also largely crap as well. there was no strict party compositions so you built around what jobs you had and made for some of the best experiences ever.

I used to tank on monk pretty frequently even against Byakko and other bosses. because a monks "counterstance" ability was incredibly strong against phyisical bosses. samurais also made very strong tanks with seigan third eye.. dancers solid healers...

FFXI was a game where your name and reputation mattered more than your job on some servers at least. if you were a selfish douche you'd not get groups even if you played the most desired of jobs.. but if you were a team player and carried a half decent rep. invites came quick. regardless of the job you were on. . the people obsessed with meta are the ones that spent 4 hours looking for a pary because if there was no ninja there was no tank.. an incredibly closed minded way of thinking.

FFXIV meta is overated anyway. all you really need to do is look at the history of materia. where for best part of 3 expansions most players didnt meld at all and noone cared.... it's only when the devs made it zero cost by allowing 100% successful removal that players started to bother. and even now a significant number still dont..

Same goes with foods and stuff noone cares if you dont pop consumables or stuff. and most people wouldnt give a monkeys if your job wasnt optimal.

being excluded or kicked from a party for not having certain spells is honestly no different to being excluded or getting kicked from parties here becuase your ilevel sucks... .. like how people set i590 on endsingers aria party farms even when the minimum is 580...

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Tyjacon

Anyone remember FFXI?

*message content cut due to game budget issues*

It's the players playstyle that killed job individuality. SE is just trying to not have a repeat of FFXI problems.

---

I hear ya. Your argument is valid, but what you need to understand is that they've been doing this ever since the start of ARR. Some would argue it began as soon as Yoshi-P took over 1.X.

The problem isn't what they're trying to do: it's that they've taken it way too far. I followed 1.X with keen interest and started playing on the launch date of 2.0, so I've seen this slippery slope in action for years now. Personally, I think they hit the sweet spot right away with ARR: some sacrifices were made to balance things out, such as getting rid of the elemental wheel, but overall the experience still felt genuine.

Barring some exceptions, most of the stuff they've done to the battle system post-ARR have only served to slowly simplify things to the point where things just don't feel like FF anymore:
● Meaningful-feeling buffs? Dispelled.
● Debuffs? Crippled.
● STR/VIT/INT/etc enhancing Materia? Discarded.
● Elemental Ward potions? Warded off.
● Actual aggro control? Trivialized.

When the game gets to a point where every job feels practically the same (because that's apparently "something everyone can enjoy" as Yoshi-P seems so fond of saying these days) it all just becomes too lukewarm to enjoy because none of it has any soul. Not wanting to repeat FFXI's mistakes does not have to include pre-digesting everything so that all you have left is DPS. And that's more or freaking less where we're now at.

When the current PvP versions of job actions (used exclusively in one small game mode) have way more interesting mechanics to them than the primary PvE actions you gain as you level up, you know something's gone horribly wrong with the game.

Bring-back-SMN-dots! Put tridisaster on a 30 second CD so you don't have to manually refresh dots, but keep the legos.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Wind-Krysvein

● STR/VIT/INT/etc enhancing Materia? Discarded.
● Elemental Ward potions? Warded off.

---

To be fair, these systems were dead on arrival in ARR, removing them was just Square mercy killing people's ability to grief their party by ever using these systems.

Elemental resist provided such a microscopic damage reduction on their corresponding elemental damage that it would take stacking a crazy amount to see any visible change - stats that would have served infinitely more use in literally anything else. Hence why the ward potions just got dusted, they served no purpose when the mitigation they gave was so bad when killing an enemy 1 GCD earlier with offensive materia melds/potions gave better damage mit than the elemental materia/potions.

Main stat materia was pointless outside extremely niche scenarios. Every job only cared about 2 of the materia in question - their main attack stat's, and VIT. Every other main stat materia for that job was dead. Even then, VIT was the only ever useful one, since your gear naturally capped your offensive stat on HQ Green/Blue/Purple gear, meaning that attack stat materia was pointless to meld. Leaving only VIT as a fringe meld when doing extreme low gear savage/ultimate progression. Only tanks saw any sort of actual depth to main stat materia, and even then that was debatable when it was just 'meld STR all the time on accessories'.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by iGiveUpLoL

With your system, some jobs are meant to play together (consider dragoon and bard in 3.x times). People eventually will adhere to this standard, cause who doesn't like faster kill time. Even with today's buffing system, just look at how many non-raid-buff jobs are in speed run. I'm talking about you - MACHINIST

---

How many people participate in speed run kills though?

I am willing to bet it's about the same or less than the number of people that participated in Mythic Raids in WoW.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Daeriion_Aeradiir

snip

---

Very true. However, what's important was that those concepts were there. Just because they weren't viable at the offset doesn't mean they couldn't have served an important purpose later on: instead of "mercykilling" a seemingly useless feature, perhaps the better idea would have been to, I dunno, readjust its parameters so that it's no longer useless/bullying material?

They could've had Wind Ward Potions be 100% necessary to survive Bismark EX's raidwides. Or made the tank use a crafted Slashing Resistance belt so that he wouldn't get killed by some crazy tankbuster by Ravana. These things aren't technically that special, but they would have added a tried-and-true, interesting layer to the meta of player preparation and gear/ability intrigue. Both of which the game is currently very lacking in.

I could go on with this, but it's probably not even necessary as you didn't really disagree with any of my main arguments. You brought up a good point, and I'm happy I could give you my thoughts on it.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by iGiveUpLoL

With your system, some jobs are meant to play together (consider dragoon and bard in 3.x times). People eventually will adhere to this standard, cause who doesn't like faster kill time. Even with today's buffing system, just look at how many non-raid-buff jobs are in speed run. I'm talking about you - MACHINIST

---

Is that really a problem? If jobs can synergize based on crit or piercing or whatever, why shouldn't they? What if we could have the good ol' drg-brd-sch party back while also getting something like, idk, gnb-mch-sge gun party meta with projectile resistance or whatever? Or make elemental resistance a real thing so you can then get a smn-blm-rdm triple caster meme party comp because of fire elemental resistance? Smn-rdm-whm for wind or earth? Add lightning dmg to drg and pair it with blm? The options are endless! Stuff like this could add so much flavor but they just won't do it, because then people might get picky about the jobs they enjoy playing with, like that's so awful! But they wouldn't, though, because getting picky about your open spots only makes them fill up slower and most people just want to fill up the party and clear asap.

As long as status effects are still a thing I believe there should be a handful of bottom line effects that can encompass a large number of jobs so you're still getting some benefit from them, but if people want to optimize off of a particular comp then that should be 100% allowed. And let's not pretend that hasn't always been a thing, even as recent as last pack the "meta" comp involved dnc-sam because they just synergized so well. And that's FINE! Content can still be cleared without the "meta" but if people want to chase a meta then let them!