Am I Wrong For Being Slightly Unimpressed by Low level Duty Support/Trust?

assuming you have your squadron somewhat progressed, it just always feels better to run with squadron than trust in ARR dungeons.

Im not sure if it's just the presence of offensive mastery for your squadrons or if there just tuned higher, but holy cow your trust members almost do negative damage in duty support.

It sucks because I was super excited for ARR trust, I'm not a fan of micromanaging the squadron members (because due to server tic and their sluggish response time, it's literally the illusion of choice. Oh, squadron member standing in an aoe? better move him, but oh wait, he didnt respond to my command until after server tic so he got hit anyways)

That, coupled with the fact that squadrons dont have access to all dungeons, I was hyped for trust. But now it feels like it's worth grinding out brayflox for 12 levels with squadrons rather than slogging through literally any dungeon with trust..

Trusts in general are kind of bad. High level ones don't really do AoEs when you pull larger in there, healing can be suspect, etc.

I would assume they don't want it to be too good for whatever reason.

I hoped they would expand Squadrons, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Personally, no you're not wrong. I substantially like the ability of my squadrons output more than trusts. Trusts are the wettest and most soggiest of noodles. Squadron AI is awful, and it takes some investment to get them to a really nice functional level, but once you do they run absolute complete circuits of circles around trusts.

I don't know if they changed it but one major complaints I have with Trusts is they were designed to do worse the better you are doing and better the worse you are. As they wanted to ensure a certain amount of time to completion. To me this just encourages playing awfully and feeling awful about doing it too. Like "this is my team when I want to progress in the game but I don't want to actually enjoy the game". Which don't get me wrong, I really like them the first time I do content as I feel it's cool to have that first time MSQ-vibe with a team, doing all of the content at my own pace (looking at the pretty environments for as long as I want for example).

While I don't think it should be in the form of levels, and I'm glad they are moving away from that concept, I do really wish they considered some other sort of progression. Because they're pretty rough. There may be some argument at DF, and I didn't have access to the data for squadrons, but my impression was the squadron system had no real impact to the DF participation rates and yet they're massively more rewarding in many more situations (imo). For example when running with my squadron with the bleeding edge of damage set and I'm creating huge piles of mobs, pushing my tanking or healing to limits, as I bring the entire dungeon to the first boss, absolutely destroy the boss faster than you'd think should be possible, and power charge into the next space with mobs still traipsing behind, ... feels fun. Doing well feels good.

I understand they might not want Trusts to be 'that' good, maybe they thought squadrons went too far when properly kitted, but I'm not sure I agree that trusts have to be 'this bad' either lol.

Anyway, I too am Jack's total sense of being unimpressed by our, supposedly, mighty companions weak participation in content. (But I still like the concept, and I do actively use them the first time around, but will avoid them otherwise unless I'm doing something weird like cooking and know I may afk in the middle of content). Would love to see them improved (and squadrons perhaps moved to a new different type of content / concept).

it's just weird to think about. an archer in your squadron with offensive mastery does more damage by itself than all three members of your trust do in. it's pitiful.

at this point i just wish theyd add all the other ARR/HW dungeons not currently available for squadron. feels bad that there's nearly 10 level gaps in between some dungeons available to squadrons

I'm upset that they made a whole "new" system, and they didn't really fix or change anything with them. It would have been a good time to expand on the idea. Such as allowing the NPCs to AOE or letting groups with two people make use of the system.

Honestly wish they would do a little bit more with Trusts/Support and Squadrons.

Duty Support is an absolute joke.

Trusts always underperformed compared to squadron, so I'm not surprised.
Also, I noticed that duty support is avalaible for less dungeons than squadrons are, which is a big minus. But on the other hand you only unlock squadron by the time that on your main class you don't need it anymore, while you use the duty support from the start, so for newbies there's that I guess?
The other day i was trying to do AV on an alt for the GC quest (to unlock the squadron on her, in fact) but it was just never popping, so I decided to give the duty support a chance and run it like that but ofc it's not an option, only msq dungeons are, which is meh.

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Originally Posted by SkyCake

I'm upset that they made a whole "new" system, and they didn't really fix or change anything with them. It would have been a good time to expand on the idea. Such as allowing the NPCs to AOE or letting groups with two people make use of the system.

Honestly wish they would do a little bit more with Trusts/Support and Squadrons.

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To be fair, there are alot more effort put into duty support allies so I imagine in their mind that there is "nothing wrong" with them, and that they serve their purpose as is; iirc it was said that they should not be as good as players. "If you want to Go Fast, get some humans" seems to be the deliberate message.

Whether or not you agree with this ideal, and to what degree, is key. "This does not fit its purpose" is much different that "this purpose is bad, actually". Personally, I think giving human parties its own advantages is admirable. That said, I do find myself caring less inclined to level the avatars compared to the squadron. It's probably because it has a more realized support system (missions, rewards) more than anything else, even if the actual ai is very, very dumb.

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Originally Posted by Irenia

To be fair, there are alot more effort put into duty support allies so I imagine in their mind that there is "nothing wrong" with them, and that they serve their purpose as is; iirc it was said that they should not be as good as players. "If you want to Go Fast, get some humans" seems to be the deliberate message.

Whether or not you agree with this ideal, and to what degree, is key. "This does not fit its purpose" is much different that "this purpose is bad, actually". Personally, I think giving human parties its own advantages is admirable. That said, I do find myself caring less inclined to level the avatars compared to the squadron. It's probably because it has a more realized support system (missions, rewards) more than anything else, even if the actual ai is very, very dumb.

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I mentioned AoE for the NPCs mostly because it kind of looks silly and might promote poor gameplay. Really, I actually want to go slow with a friend. Spend like 1+ hour in a dungeon and not worry about the other two in the party getting impatient. When I was returning to FFXIV recently, I was really hoping Duty Support would let that happen. Ah well.

Also need more femroe Squadron members as I have all the current ones. :c

Not a big deal in the end either since I think the system as a whole is pretty nifty. Even with the AI.

Squadrons have some nice old school spells and can ignore a lot of things, but I found them problematic in some dungeons. WP (hard) comes to mind.

I think down the road they'll come around to improving squadron and perhaps expand what they're capable of doing. We might have to wait til they're caught up with duty support for all the existing dungeons.

Wanna know how stupidly trust is designed? Well here's an example: I'm tanking and use single target attacks, you know, to make it go faster, but after i tested just spamming AoE attacks and nothing but, the trust DPS basically quadrupled, which is freaking nuts (even though that doesn't seem to work completely reliably).

So it basically encourages you to not play, which is dumb as fudge.

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Originally Posted by Misplaced_Marbles

Wanna know how stupidly trust is designed? Well here's an example: I'm tanking and use single target attacks, you know, to make it go faster, but after i tested just spamming AoE attacks and nothing but, the trust DPS basically quadrupled, which is freaking nuts (even though that doesn't seem to work completely reliably).

So it basically encourages you to not play, which is dumb as fudge.

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Context? I'm hoping you're talking about a boss fight, but it'll be more entertaining if you're talking pulls. :p

I also wish they'd just expanded upon squadrons, in fact, I think the whole Grand Company system could use a revamp because the ranks unlock too slowly given how quickly you can outlevel it even without Road to 80.

Ideally, I would love to be able to fully customize my own party. Think retainers, but as trusts when the Scions (or whoever) aren't available. Barring that, I liked being able to recruit, not just be perpetually stuck with Generic Roegadyn Tank, Generic Lalafell Thaumaturge, etc. I'd also like the ability to increase their stats/dps like I can with squadrons. As it is, the poor AI for squadrons is a small price to pay for the kill speed of a group that's maxed out offensively. Trusts have superior AI, but waiting for them to kill groups one enemy at a time... Zzz...

I feel like this has the potential to be a fun bit of side content for those of us who prefer to play solo (and are completionists), but they've made it not fun for reasons? One of the best parts about playing JRPGs is making your party powerful.

The squadron AI is just flat stupidity.

The trusts at least get out of mechanics.

They serve a purpose, and they do it well, quite honestly. You can wall pull with a trust, it just takes a little work. No they aren't as fast as groups, obviously.

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Originally Posted by lAurasl

assuming you have your squadron somewhat progressed, it just always feels better to run with squadron than trust in ARR dungeons.

Im not sure if it's just the presence of offensive mastery for your squadrons or if there just tuned higher, but holy cow your trust members almost do negative damage in duty support.

It sucks because I was super excited for ARR trust, I'm not a fan of micromanaging the squadron members (because due to server tic and their sluggish response time, it's literally the illusion of choice. Oh, squadron member standing in an aoe? better move him, but oh wait, he didnt respond to my command until after server tic so he got hit anyways)

That, coupled with the fact that squadrons dont have access to all dungeons, I was hyped for trust. But now it feels like it's worth grinding out brayflox for 12 levels with squadrons rather than slogging through literally any dungeon with trust..

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Duty Support is designed deliberately so completing the dungeon with players in Duty Finder should generally be a better experience (or at least a faster one) than using Duty Support. It's also intended more for MSQ support, not alt leveling support.

Squadrons will never have the full range of dungeon options so them being OP for a few doesn't really matter.

Squadrons were the beta of the trust system, I would be surprised if they touched squadrons again when they have gone from Squadron > Trust > Duty Support. Trusts / Duty support will always be less efficient than using Duty Finder or going with some friends / FC mates.

Trusts are designed to complete a dungeon in a given time. Usually about 25-30 minutes. You can't really make them go slower or faster than that. Start pumping massive AoE DPS and they will switch to single target pot shots. Decided to AFK at the back while watching YouTube? At some point Trusts will literally start using instant-death abilities.

This is a very different mindset from squadrons.

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Originally Posted by EnigmaticDodo

Trusts in general are kind of bad. High level ones don't really do AoEs when you pull larger in there, healing can be suspect, etc.

I would assume they don't want it to be too good for whatever reason.

I hoped they would expand Squadrons, but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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They never meant it to be stronger or more effective than an actual party, that's the reason.

Granted, I still do every new instance with Trusts mainly because they let you know how mechanics work, before I embarass myself in front of actual people lol.

I noticed in screenshots I saw that one of the NPCs in the Duty Support trusts is a cute Elezen lancer. Did they fix the broken combos for NPCs in regards to True Thrust > Disembowl > Chaos Thrust? Because a big glaring issue with one of the squadron options after they updated combos and skills for players was that they didn't change anything for squadron skills, so the lancer combos broke, and if you had a lancer in the party, it'd fail to apply Chaos Thrust every time, because it's using Impulse Drive to start the original form of the combo, which no longer works lol.

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Originally Posted by lAurasl

assuming you have your squadron somewhat progressed, it just always feels better to run with squadron than trust in ARR dungeons.

Im not sure if it's just the presence of offensive mastery for your squadrons or if there just tuned higher, but holy cow your trust members almost do negative damage in duty support.

It sucks because I was super excited for ARR trust, I'm not a fan of micromanaging the squadron members (because due to server tic and their sluggish response time, it's literally the illusion of choice. Oh, squadron member standing in an aoe? better move him, but oh wait, he didnt respond to my command until after server tic so he got hit anyways)

That, coupled with the fact that squadrons dont have access to all dungeons, I was hyped for trust. But now it feels like it's worth grinding out brayflox for 12 levels with squadrons rather than slogging through literally any dungeon with trust..

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Trusts werent meant to replace squadrons. It's just to have the mainstory accessible as much as possible without queue times and in a solo version. For most aoes you dont even need to move squadrons out of, they are just too tanky to take meaningful damage. This was done exactly because they are so sluggish to move.

They probably want to incentivize doing dungeons with other players over trusts/squadrons.

All around they can have issues and as someone mentioned the high level trusts(scions and friends) do not bother with aoes, so unless you're tanking, you probably aren't going to be able to pull big. Squadrons do have that small bonus over trusts in the same level range though, since they have masteries. Level 5 offensive mastery is +60% damage dealt and your squadron absolutely melts single targets if everyone there has it. It's just a shame that squadrons are so unfriendly to controller players as you do have to manually order them around for basically everything.

Trusts aren't required you can do duties normally. Of course they'll take more time if they didn't then many would stop using df for them. I personally love the addition of them and never could get excited about squadrons.

When Duty Support became a thing I rolled a new alt to experience the revised 1-50 leveling experience solo. Out of the 20 runs to 50 I've done as a DPS that had to have been one of the smoothest. Any time I needed a dungeon for the story I had an instant party with a reasonably competent tank and healer. No 20 minute queue. No begging friends to queue with me. No complaints or passive aggressive responses. While it was a lonely experience it was great for story immersion.

Note that I didn't include the DPS when I said "reasonably competent". Oh sure they tended to not stand in bad but that's where it ends. I tried running as a healer and a tank and had to provide 75% of the DPS. The healing experience was compounded by the fact that the tank was apparently made out of paper.

I am over the moon with the decision that Duty Support members haven't been inflicted with that awful leveling system that plague the Trusts. I tried but I just cannot stand chain running the same instance over and over. Despite that being nerfed a few times I just cannot motivate myself to do it. That limited Trusts usefulness to the unlock run during the story. I would have loved to use them while leveling some of my off roles during ShB and didn't want to deal with randoms.

Trusts and DS desperately needs the Engage command from squadrons. It's incredibly stupid that I need to inch forward enough to clue in the tank that they need to start the fight or even start it myself.

I absolutely disagree with the decision to lobotomize DS/Trust dps. This system is designed for new players that are interested in the story but not interested in the grouping aspect. How many people have picked a class/job without an understanding what the trinity roles are? Those people are going to have a very poor experience IMO.

That bad NPC dps and the struggles with getting the tank to pull is just going to teach some very bad habits.

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Originally Posted by GeminiReed

When Duty Support became a thing I rolled a new alt to experience the revised 1-50 leveling experience solo. Out of the 20 runs to 50 I've done as a DPS that had to have been one of the smoothest. Any time I needed a dungeon for the story I had an instant party with a reasonably competent tank and healer. No 20 minute queue. No begging friends to queue with me. No complaints or passive aggressive responses. While it was a lonely experience it was great for story immersion.

Note that I didn't include the DPS when I said "reasonably competent". Oh sure they tended to not stand in bad but that's where it ends. I tried running as a healer and a tank and had to provide 75% of the DPS. The healing experience was compounded by the fact that the tank was apparently made out of paper.

I am over the moon with the decision that Duty Support members haven't been inflicted with that awful leveling system that plague the Trusts. I tried but I just cannot stand chain running the same instance over and over. Despite that being nerfed a few times I just cannot motivate myself to do it. That limited Trusts usefulness to the unlock run during the story. I would have loved to use them while leveling some of my off roles during ShB and didn't want to deal with randoms.

Trusts and DS desperately needs the Engage command from squadrons. It's incredibly stupid that I need to inch forward enough to clue in the tank that they need to start the fight or even start it myself.

I absolutely disagree with the decision to lobotomize DS/Trust dps. This system is designed for new players that are interested in the story but not interested in the grouping aspect. How many people have picked a class/job without an understanding what the trinity roles are? Those people are going to have a very poor experience IMO.

That bad NPC dps and the struggles with getting the tank to pull is just going to teach some very bad habits.

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I recently leveled an alt as well. When it came time for EW trial 2, I used that and oh my goodness, what a smooth run. I think they intentionally botched the first donut AOE to show what happens. After that, things were as one would expect.

I have mixed feelings on the engage button. I never found a good place to hold those buttons and it just felt like it was in the way. I struggled in some squad runs because even with the engage button, they wouldn't work right in dungeon like WP (hard). I'd rather focus on my rotation and dealing with certain situations than be reaching out for another command.

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Originally Posted by Greyhawk

...The trusts at least get out of mechanics...

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and then stand completely still, even if they are a ranged class or possess ranged skills. They also will fail if more than 1 type of attack goes off at once. ex; on adds, one enemy will do a cone, they'll dodge that. If another cone shows up on them, they'll stand in it because they are still working on the first one.

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Originally Posted by Deveryn

Context? I'm hoping you're talking about a boss fight, but it'll be more entertaining if you're talking pulls. :p

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It's very likely that trust DPS is dependant on how long you're in combat against mobs/bosses, and will scale up if the player DPS ends up being on the low end. I've recently tested this on DRK during some of my trust runs in the Tower of Babil. One run with me pressing most of my buttons in the most optimal way that I'm capable of, one run with me just pressing my AoE combo (Unleash -> Stalwart Soul), and my 1-2-3 enmity combo. The difference between the two runs was about 1.5 min.

So yes, it's possible that trust DPS could increase if you were to just spam AoE on bosses.

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Originally Posted by Nezerius

It's very likely that trust DPS is dependant on how long you're in combat against mobs/bosses, and will scale up if the player DPS ends up being on the low end. I've recently tested this on DRK during some of my trust runs in the Tower of Babil. One run with me pressing most of my buttons in the most optimal way that I'm capable of, one run with me just pressing my AoE combo (Unleash -> Stalwart Soul), and my 1-2-3 enmity combo. The difference between the two runs was about 1.5 min.

So yes, it's possible that trust DPS could increase if you were to just spam AoE on bosses.

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So, you're saying trusts try to force a set clear time? Do too good, DPS slows. Do poorly, DPS increases. That's incredibly lame.

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Originally Posted by EnigmaticDodo

So, you're saying trusts try to force a set clear time? Do too good, DPS slows. Do poorly, DPS increases. That's incredibly lame.

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Probably my least favorite part about them. I think initially it sounded okay, but the feature is so strong that you can just tell and it makes you feel "what's the point in trying". If they refused all other sort of buff ideas to the concept, which I hope they wont, as I loved upgrading my squadron and feeling the tangible result from it (and I think it could have a lot of sRPG bioware, quest, etc, character development opportunities).

But if that's just a pure no go, then at least I hope they consider making their damage consistent and do something else if it needs to be for helping players (like better recovery spells / frequency, or just invoke the WoL buff that we get in MSQ for yourself lol). But as it stands I usually feel like the trust system is good for first time and when I want to play so lazily and so badly that I wouldn't even tell my chocobo about it.