Jobs should gain their core rotations much earlier

Jobs below level 50 (or in some cases 60/70 or for reaper 80) are horrifically boring due to how few buttons they have. I understand they’re like this as to not overwhelm new players but I don’t think giving sprouts more opportunities to have fun at earlier levels is a bad idea. In my own experience, a lot of friends I’ve tried to get into 14 have bounced off due to how unfun jobs are early on. Plus, giving jobs their rotations at earlier levels would make level sync’d content more fun for experienced players.

I don’t mean “give jobs their entire kits at level 50”. What I mean is more like “give jobs roughly what monk has now where it has its core rotational buttons and job gimmicks/gauges at level 50”.

Currently people with MMO experience get the free trial, play 40 hours, beat ARR and they have 5 buttons to press which have minimal interaction with each other. People new to the genre do largely the same thing except jobs gain core abilities or features very late so new players have less time to get used to using them like paladin not getting magic until the 60’s, SMN not getting ITG astral flow until 86, WHM not getting blood Lily until 74 etc.

This would be a fantastic change to see at the start of Dawntrail

We’re seeing them move in this direction with things like the SMN rework. The problem being, the job is just not fun to play at all now instead of just at early levels.

I would absolutely love 50 to have something more. Dragoon was horrendous until around level 60. Black mage is basically pick fire or ice.

I think the best way to have done it would be to have you need to level to unlock the skills but then bring the skills down to that level's damage when you're doing lower level content.

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

We’re seeing them move in this direction with things like the SMN rework. The problem being, the job is just not fun to play at all now instead of just at early levels.

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I love current SMN. If they make it any more complex, I probably won't play it anymore.

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Originally Posted by Remish

I love current SMN. If they make it any more complex, I probably won't play it anymore.

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You could just not press the added buttons and you have the same. I really like SMN conceptually but I absolutely don't like how it plays. lol

The two points that seem to always cause issues with learning are too many OGCDs, or the rotation shifting significantly after a specific point like how old BLM used to be. The other problem that they have is that they got to find ways to cram a lot of controls into a smaller package due to the way the game is built.

hard agree hate going in to a level 30 dungeon and having no buttons.. let my nin use mudra pleaseee!

also give drk TBN earlier, they really lack defensives in early game play, make it the level 50 skill or something

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

We’re seeing them move in this direction with things like the SMN rework. The problem being, the job is just not fun to play at all now instead of just at early levels.

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If You look at Reaper and its hardly like what it is at 90. Same with GNB, DNC doesn't even get partner until 60? It's super inconsistent at best with new design. You could also include sage? but healers have the same rotation from all levels...

I think think Summoners a case of a class that it's a basic design, that all was needed was ability upgrades for the most part after a certain point, which results it feeling similar at all levels. Which yeah I don't want for every job, it's fine for *some* jobs to be easy but old summoner players that actually enjoyed the job were the ones getting a bad deal here, It's good to have some easier jobs, but they should always be new ones instead of just making every job easy for every player... Not all Jobs should be designed to be easy for everyone. I hope SE makes a fair balance of difficulty for more jobs in the future despite current trends.

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

You could just not press the added buttons and you have the same. I really like SMN conceptually but I absolutely don't like how it plays. lol

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I didn't like how old SMN plays myself. New SMN feels great to me. Like I said, if they revert it or make it any worse, I just won't touch it. Either way, some group of people isn't going to like the changes.
Also we both know that not pressing added buttons is being a poor sport in high end content and you will be called out not playing the job right.

Personally, I don't think it's an issue of not having enough buttons. Rather, I think it's the unfortunate fact that jobs have far too many buttons that don't do anything meaningful or interesting. So instead of our buttons having depth, we get breadth: lots of buttons that generally do nothing interesting, but at least you've got 25 buttons so you can pick a new one to press every 2.5 seconds.

Which isn't to say that some of the buttons aren't interesting; some are! But there's a whole lot of filler in our kits that's doing little more than keeping our fingers occupied.

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Originally Posted by Cabalabob

We’re seeing them move in this direction with things like the SMN rework. The problem being, the job is just not fun to play at all now instead of just at early levels.

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I don't think summoner was that bad even at early levels, I was enjoying doing the zodiac relic stuff on it before 6.0 and haven't been able to face it since the rework. Both dots, pet actions, fester and bane broke up the ruin spam enough to feel engaging, even if dwt/ruin4/that stupid demi weren't there.

You gotta sync down and lost 90% of your skills/traits so the sprout who is actually a free trial can have the same experience than you 10 years ago in Sastasha and you gonna like it.

Also having your core rotation at early levels means less money for Square because you won't need the latest expansion.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

If You look at Reaper and its hardly like what it is at 90. Same with GNB, DNC doesn't even get partner until 60? It's super inconsistent at best with new design. You could also include sage? but healers have the same rotation from all levels...

I think think Summoners a case of a class that it's a basic design, that all was needed was ability upgrades for the most part after a certain point, which results it feeling similar at all levels. Which yeah I don't want for every job, it's fine for *some* jobs to be easy but old summoner players that actually enjoyed the job were the ones getting a bad deal here, It's good to have some easier jobs, but they should always be new ones instead of just making every job easy for every player... Not all Jobs should be designed to be easy for everyone. I hope SE makes a fair balance of difficulty for more jobs in the future despite current trends.

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Do you even play this game? Dancer’s starting level is 60! Not even to mention that a healer’s “DPS rotation” is not how to consider a class whose primary job is healing, especially in lower level content like the dungeons in the Leveling Roulette.

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Originally Posted by Mostly_Raxus

also give drk TBN earlier, they really lack defensives in early game play, make it the level 50 skill or something

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Right? Why on earth is Sheltron level 35 while Raw Intuition is 56 and HoS/TBN are 68/70?

Also give GNB Fated Circle much earlier, please.

For SMN,

I think it could use some of this. It's actually not bad and fun to play once you get past around 86th level. But the levels prior to that are almost all just Ruin Spam or a spinoff thereof.

I think there is where it really needs a little more complexity is the pre-86th level portion. Once you get to 86th level then it does start to get a little more complex, still not nearly as much as it used to be, but at least it's more than just Ruin or Tri-Disaster spam of different names.

But it is honestly fine past 86th.

The constant extending of the range where you gain abilities and power creeping potency has made earlier parts of game a lot more miserable to play compared to what they were. Sure everything dies faster now, saving time in roulettes, but most jobs just aren't fun to play below level cap.

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Originally Posted by ChonkGoblinSuprem

Do you even play this game? Dancer’s starting level is 60! Not even to mention that a healer’s “DPS rotation” is not how to consider a class whose primary job is healing, especially in lower level content like the dungeons in the Leveling Roulette.

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Yes I play the game and have every job at 90, The point was new job designs don't have a lot of their core class abilities at lower levels and summoner is not a indication of change it's more of a exception to that rule, Paladin was also not changed to fit into level 50 content.

Core rotations and abilities shouldn't be missing at below level 60 even if the job starts at 60, because you get synched down a lot of the time, So it's still a issue for the class when you do get synched down are you're missing a lot of abilities.

My sage point has nothing to do with DPS rotations, I was just referring that it doesn't change a lot like summoner because it's a healer.

They mostly are having issues with scaling jobs because they chose to go with a combo design that keeps adding things onto it. So as someone is leveling up they are supposed to be increasing the number of balls they are juggling and things should be getting steadily more interesting to run. The issue with the combo design is that it isn't about expanding how someone plays the game but rather making what someone does to interact with the game more challenging. Effectively, someone is getting nerfed the higher level they get because to net the proper damage or output at the higher level, someone has to juggle more controls than they did at a lower one. That's partially why DPS feels more fun than healers, because ultimately what is making something fun to play in this stripped down experience is just getting the big flashy payoff animation for a big combo.

Could you imagine if healing worked the same way as DPS? You'd have healers pulling their hair out trying to combo into the proper heal they need to do while rezzing Mc Poopy pants who threw himself off a ledge because he couldn't turn the other way when the boss is doing a gaze attack, all the while your tank who didn't mitigate decided to eat a double tank buster. Oh, and the other healer is probably trying to combo into his big heal as well, so now both healers are totally trying to figure out how to sync the big heal.

They really needed a different idea than the combo one. I'd much rather have a basic attack and utility skills so that they can make content fun for everyone and not just the DPS.

I don't think summoner is a good example because they really didn't change anything level/dungeon wise for summoner skills. in fact they removed a handful of buttons like miasma, bane and removed what fester actually did which was designed to originally which was spread the dots around to group mobs, removed of the carbuncle/summon skills you had control over, and summons were used based on the situation you were in. mass pulls bust out garuda egi and the aoe attack. need melee attack call out ifrit. Tank messed up send in ifrit to keep the boss of others until tank can be raised. I kind of missed that. summoner was quite useful in lower-level dungeons just no one wanted to take time to understand how it worked.

We used to have our full rotation at 50.

Sadly most of that got removed in order to remove bloat when the classes hit endgame.

Each time 10 more levels show up, something gets stolen from the early game.

I lean towards give the jobs basically the full dps kit by level 20. And just change the animations with new abilities as you level. Then add the single special skills later.

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

I lean towards give the jobs basically the full dps kit by level 20. And just change the animations with new abilities as you level. Then add the single special skills later.

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At this point, why have leveling at all.

-> Have a nice rotation very soon

-> Feel the evolution of your abilities

Pick one, there's no good answer :rolleyes:

my big grief is not having my gap closer on tanks at lower levels.

so often i'll go into a roulette, hit my gap closer hotkey and stand there doing nothing for a few seconds until i realise... "oh, derp" :(

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Originally Posted by CaedemSanguis

-> Have a nice rotation very soon

-> Feel the evolution of your abilities

Pick one, there's no good answer :rolleyes:

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The good answer is having a proper rotation at level 50, Back in 2.0 ARR jobs actually had proper rotations, that was just slowly took out over time to make space for expansion abilities.

ARR should be the source of main "class progression" (for learning your class abilities) PLD for example should gain magic attacks (a core part of its identity), but that can be later expanded on with the holy blade attacks or any upgrades... The base class should feel somewhat similar from 50 to 90, as you'll be synching back and forward from those content, level 50 ARR shouldn't feel half complete for classes.

Not saying every Job should feel the exact same from 50 to 90, they should get upgrades, new defensive/utility skills, some exciting damage buttons, but at the same time a lot of jobs are hardly recognisable and are just practically unfun to play at 50

They do seem to be getting better at this. Personally I believe every Job should have most of the "core" of its rotation by level 50. Considering the bulk of the game's content is 50+ roulettes and such). The core rotation (1-2-3 or DoT+nuke) should be done by level 30, ideally by level 15 when ques start. They should really move a lot of the oGCD stuff to later levels. For instance, PLD gets Fight or Flight at level 2. Before it gets the -2 in its combo or its AOE (levels 4 and 6) or the third hit of its core combo (26), and well before it gets stuff like its heal 58) or even its first mitigation (35). And you don't come close to getting its "true" rotation until at least level 68 when you first get Requiescat, but realistically not until 76 since you don't get Atonement until then. The first spell WHM gets when it gets its Job stone isn't Holy for AOE or Regen or Cure 3 for healing...it's Presence of Mind, something that in theory can be used as a healing CD but is almost always used for damage, but you can't do anything optimal with at level 30 anyway since you're around 20-30 levels before other Jobs start getting party buffs.

All that being said, you get some Jobs like WAR that essentially has its end-game rotation by level 50 (its upkeep buff, main combo, GCD rage spender, oGCD +50 rage button, and 1 min CD burst buff), where after that, mostly it just gets upgrades to abilities, gets Raw Intuition at 56 turning it into the tanking god, and gets death buzzsaw at 90. But most of these don't change the core gameplay itself other than 62 and 64 giving you some oGCDs to use on CD (Upheval) and cram into your burst phase (Onslaught).

SMN, for all it is attacked, has its core rotation mostly by level 22 (all three legos and the button that regenerates them and boosts damage), and by the latest, 60 when it gets Astral Flow for Dreadwyrm Trance, which is just low level Bahamut. Higher than that it just promotes and ups potencies, the party buff at 66, and the Primal Astral Flows at 86 (though only two of those change the rotation, and not by much since at lower levels you simply fill Slipstream and Crimson Cyclone/Strike's GCDs with 3x more Ruins instead.

RDM doesn't start until 50, but has essentially its rotation done at 60 when it gets Embolden and Manafication. Yes, it adds Holy/Flare (70), Scorch (80), and Resolution (90) after that, but they're each just "press one more button at the end of the melee combo", which doesn't really change the gameplay much, and only Holy/Flare is a choice anyway, the other two you automatically do no matter what.

SCH is pretty much, relatively speaking, "feature complete" by 60, if not 50, in terms of the playstyle, rotation, and so on, with the later stuff being more powerful versions and additional oGCDs, but they have the core concept of weaving oGCDs and the base DoT+nuke rotation as well as Ruin 2 for movement and Energy Drain for AF dumps all by level 50.

.

So some Jobs are better about this than others. I think WAR and SMN are probably the best designed in this sense right now (in terms of having their overall rotation and Job setup by level 50 where the later additions are relatively minor), with RDM and probably SCH being second from there. (Some other Jobs might make this list, I'm just not sure about them...like WHM is easy, but doesn't have its Afflatus abilities until the 70s.)

Even rotations are boring. Dodge the bad and keep rotation going isn’t engaging content.

I miss the days of situational awareness. Elemental counters, damage type changes, etc. for all the good YP did getting the game popular again, he is destroying the franchise with his over accessibility campaign.

14 and 16 are now too easy and dumbed down.

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Originally Posted by Remish

I love current SMN. If they make it any more complex, I probably won't play it anymore.

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Agreed.

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Originally Posted by Payadopa

You could just not press the added buttons and you have the same. I really like SMN conceptually but I absolutely don't like how it plays. lol

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Unless the buttons do absolutely nothing, this is never a valid rebuttal. For example, suppose there's a RDM that doesn't like melee. While, yes, you could tell them to just not ever use the melee buttons, that means they're basically griefing every party they got into for encounters without enrages by making encounters take far far FAR longer than they need to, and for anything with enrages, make it somewhat impossible for the other 7+ people in the party to clear.

That's not a valid response.

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Originally Posted by Colt47

The two points that seem to always cause issues with learning are too many OGCDs, or the rotation shifting significantly after a specific point like how old BLM used to be. The other problem that they have is that they got to find ways to cram a lot of controls into a smaller package due to the way the game is built.

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Agree with this, too. Pre-6.3 PLD was annoying to sync because muscle memory would have you go Royal combo after the magic phase (since Swords put a DoT on the enemy that didn't stack with Goring), but doing anything level 89 or lower - one level before max level - meant upending your muscle memory entirely. BLM was in a similar boat (and I guess still kinda is), and I remember having a friend that would not run anything not level cap on their BLM because it would screw with her muscle memory.

Jobs don't need to be TOTALLY complete by 50, but they shouldn't be actively countermanding your trained muscle memory you've spent hours/days/etc developing at level cap.

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Originally Posted by Brightamethyst

Right? Why on earth is Sheltron level 35 while Raw Intuition is 56 and HoS/TBN are 68/70?

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To be fair, Shelltron isn't a good ability until 82 when it gains the heal. Raw Intuition has the heal from the jump and upgrades (twice?) to be even more healy. Shelltron is just flat DPS (and when it was put at level 35, was only block chance increase, not flat damage mitigation).

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

I think think Summoners a case of a class that it's a basic design, that all was needed was ability upgrades for the most part after a certain point, which results it feeling similar at all levels. Which yeah I don't want for every job, it's fine for *some* jobs to be easy but old summoner players that actually enjoyed the job were the ones getting a bad deal here, It's good to have some easier jobs, but they should always be new ones instead of just making every job easy for every player... Not all Jobs should be designed to be easy for everyone. I hope SE makes a fair balance of difficulty for more jobs in the future despite current trends.

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As a long-time SMN player who really likes new SMN was was kind of meh on old SMN by ShB (I liked it in ARR and HW, but SB and ShB just got progressively more Frankenstein's monster), I do hope the new caster is good for you guys. Hoping for Green Mage DoT Mage since I know a lot of people did enjoy that. Though personally, I find new SMN feels a lot better to play, but everyone has their own preferences and I respect that.

I do 100% agree with you, though, that it's nice to have a mix of easier and hard Jobs in the game so everyone can kind of choose their own adventure/level they want to engage at. I'm not sure they should always be new ones - some old Jobs were easy before, so it makes sense for them to be so now (RDM used to be a bit easier, BRD used to be considered easier, WHM was always considered easy), etc. And I think some Jobs starting at level 1 being easy is a good idea since a player that wants an easier Job shouldn't have to level to 70/80/etc before unlocking it; some that start at level 1 (ideally one for each role) would be a better idea. And some people who want harder Jobs want a new one from time to time, so it would suck if all new Jobs were the easy ones. :)

But I do agree with you that it's bad to pull a Job out from under people - and this goes both ways. Making SMN easy or making WHM hard would upend the people that played them before in a lot of cases, and that's not really fair to the existing players. I hope they don't do any major reworks like THAT going forward, just because of how alienating it is.

/looks nervously at DRG and AST...

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Originally Posted by CaedemSanguis

-> Have a nice rotation very soon

-> Feel the evolution of your abilities

Pick one, there's no good answer :rolleyes:

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My answer solved both of those. It's amazing how many options open up when you can count to three.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

RDM doesn't start until 50, but has essentially its rotation done at 60 when it gets Embolden and Manafication. Yes, it adds Holy/Flare (70), Scorch (80), and Resolution (90) after that, but they're each just "press one more button at the end of the melee combo", which doesn't really change the gameplay much, and only Holy/Flare is a choice anyway, the other two you automatically do no matter what.

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RDM is a bad example of having "essentially its rotation done at 60", though, as I pointed out in that other thread:

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Originally Posted by Rongway

Red Mage for example. If they try to learn it like a Lv1 starter job, by only playing low level stuff until they're used to the basics, without cross referencing the higher level actions periodically, it's really easy to develop two bad habits:

1. Starting a melee combo at 50|50 or some other balanced value.
2. Casting Verstone-Verthunder when White is at +1 or Verfire-Veraero when Black is at +1, which leaves them balanced.

These two mistakes have no negative impact until 68/70, at which point they suddenly become significant mistakes.

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If the addition of a single action or action pair ten levels later invalidates habits allowed or encouraged for the 50 levels prior, the "core" action set is incomplete. We should get weaker Vercombofinishers (Verquake? Verfreeze?) as soon as we get Redoublement.

The first thing that needs to be considered, if you want to go down this path, is what counts as 'the core rotation' for the jobs?

The second is, would this be a good strategy? If you are having to get everything in a jobs core under 50, with everything above being classed as 'non core' or upgrades, would this feel good to actually play?

The last (at least of what I want to mention here) is the number of actions that need to be fitted in by level 50 and whether it is a realistic thing that can happen (and then whether it would leave the later levels bare bones as well).

And you cannot just leave a job with effectively nothing to change rotations around, of which I will reference SB Monk. They essentially got nothing, to list them, RoE (which was not as good on release as it has been), added in the RNG to Chakra gain (which was 50% on crit, lower than it is currently at 80% starting), elemental tackles, which was just a potency increase to Shoulder Tackle (became more useful towards the end with the TK rotation), RoF (Damage buff with a slowdown, effectively replacing Blood for Blood cross class) and Brotherhood which only increased physical damage and only proced off of weapon skills and not spells. Many people would have said early SB Monk was underwhelming, myself included and Monk was the first DPS I levelled in both ARR and HW, but it just didn't grab me (levelled it as a second DPS after MCH in SB).

Now, this isn't to say things that aren't part of the core rotation are all uninteresting. Going back to Monk, getting Form Shift in HW, whilst it doesn't seem like much on the surface, it did make a massive impact in how it was played as you now had to manage your buffs during downtime and which form you should enter back into (remembering back then it still cycled though the Monk's forms). Or, going to BLM, the introduction of Aspect Mastery where your opposite element spells cost no MP, in ShB, which was so useful, it was taken all the way down to level 1 in EW.

And so, going back to 'the core rotation', can you make a rotation interesting at level 50 and still add enough to keep people engaged through the 40, soon to be 50, levels to get to cap? If something gets added in an expansion, could this mean they potentially need to look at the 'core rotation' again and adjust if needed?

I think, ultimately, someone needs to define what a 'core rotation' is and take some examples of existing jobs and say how they would be changed to suit this idea, just to bring a more solid foundation to the idea.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

I think, ultimately, someone needs to define what a 'core rotation' is and take some examples of existing jobs and say how they would be changed to suit this idea, just to bring a more solid foundation to the idea.

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I would look at ARR's Class/Job split for this one. Currently, the OG jobs learn stuff between 30 and 50 that are often integral to their gameplay, but it's flagged as being 'Class moves' rather than 'Job moves'. Storm's Eye on WAR, and it's buff, for example, are absolutely key to the gameplay of the WAR job, but that move is at level 50 in the class section of it's gameplay, from MRD. For a few weird levels, WAR wants to AOE in single target situations to put up the Surging Tempest buff, because you get Eye at 50, but Mythril Tempest at 40. I think that all the ARR jobs should have whatever they have in the 'class' section of the tree, from 1-50, moved down to be in the 1-30. This means, for example, MNK would have all 6 of it's ST moves by level 30. DRG would have both the True/Vorpal/Full combo, and the True/Disembowel/Chaotic combo, by level 30. Medica 2 on WHM would be moved down to 1-30 (helps with things like Aurum Vale, which currently syncs to 49 so you lose Med2). Warrior would, as mentioned, get Storm's Eye earlier than the AOE that gives the buff, which makes it make sense again (plus Vengeance). Paladin would get Circle of Scorn and Sentinel earlier.

Additionally, moving some key moves down the levels, to promote better play-feel at lower levels. Good examples of that would be BRD, swap Warden's (the esuna, level 35) with Wanderer's and PitchPerfect(the strongest of your 3 songs, level 52) so you can have your full 3 song rotation in 50 content instead of the weird dead gap. Or put Wanderer's at 45, and then move Rain of Death from there down to 35 (since you get Mages which resets it, at 30). NIN could get it's Armor Crush moved down a bit so you don't have to do the weird 'spend one mudra set per minute on refreshing Huton' in 50 content.

The issue then would be that the 30-50 gap would be 'learn one thing per 5 levels', I guess, but hopefully frontloading the other 1-50 stuff a bit harder would help to disguise that gap a bit

I mean the problem mostly is that people aren't getting the rotation early enough, so they are kind of blind buying into a job and hoping that after all the time they spend on it the job will play the way they like. As a consequence someone can like playing a Lancer and dislike playing dragoon way later, or find BLM / that prelude job boring, but then like BLM later after it got its keystone rotation in place.

It doesn't take long to figure out if someone likes a job or not, but there's no way to know that until climbing to some pretty high levels.

Just give me an AoE earlier, please.

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Originally Posted by Rongway

RDM is a bad example of having "essentially its rotation done at 60", though, as I pointed out in that other thread:
...
If the addition of a single action or action pair ten levels later invalidates habits allowed or encouraged for the 50 levels prior, the "core" action set is incomplete. We should get weaker Vercombofinishers (Verquake? Verfreeze?) as soon as we get Redoublement.

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It really does, though. The concept of the party buff (Embolden) and of using Manification to get to a melee combo are both there at 60. So are Swiftcast and Acceleration, and all your oGCD attacks. The only things you're missing out on are Verraise (64) and Magick Barrier (84) as situational abilities, Reprise (76) which is a movement tool that's generally avoided, and upgrades to Jolt II (62), Verthunder III and Veraero III (82), and Impact (66), none of which alter the rotation. The 50/50 would be a good point, except you generally aren't landing at EXACTLY 50/50 at any point, and it's extremely easy to tap your balance off from that and easy to learn at 68/70 when it matters. It doesn't change the overall core rotation or concept of the Job in ways that are really significant. It doesn't change the short-long cast cycles, and it doesn't change that you go into your burst once you have the mana for it unless you're holding for burst, where you also exploit Manafication and Embolden to boost damage and fit in more burst combos.

The ability to choose Holy or Flare is not a difficult evolution, and it doesn't completely alter the rotation.

Contrast something like BLM, where the rotation shifts significantly over the course of leveling, or PLD where it changes once you get Requiescat and again when you get Attonement.

RDM is "essentially" done at 60. I didn't say it was "completely" done, because it's not - nothing is, not even WAR. But the overall flow of the Job, how things work, the timers, the weaves, and the concept of overall how it works IS done by then. If you sync down from 90 to 60 on RDM, you can play it mostly the same. You're ABLE, if you want, to melee at 50/50, but you can keep going melee at 51/50 and are not harmed by doing so. That's what I mean.

As for someone leveling, presumably they at last glance at their tooltips. If they don't, then the conversation is moot anyway since they wouldn't even know what manafication does or why 50/50 is needed for the melee combos.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

The first thing that needs to be considered, if you want to go down this path, is what counts as 'the core rotation' for the jobs?

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This is honestly the bigger thing. Some Jobs it's pretty easy to define this (SMN and WAR, for example), but some Jobs, less so. Is Atonement part of the "core" PLD rotation? Holy Might? Requiescat? But aren't Swords? Is Holy Spirit x4 an adequate low level substitute?

It can be a tricky question for some Jobs, so that's a fair point.

For me personally, I think players should be exposed to the main concepts of the Job (for RDM, this would be short-long casts, the melee burst phase, oGCD weaves, and the enhancements to it with Manafication; for WAR, the 1-2-3, -4 upkeep buff, the 1 min CD, and the Beast Gauge spender) and have the complete rotation, if applicable, by level 60 at the latest. Additional charges to things (e.g. Acceleration's second charge), situational abilities (e.g. Magick Barrier), and so on are the things that should be pushed to the later part of the leveling experience, once players actually have encounters that flex them and the other Jobs have more of theirs to work together with.

WHM doesn't even get its first Lily spell (core to its endgame gameplay) until 52, and doesn't get Misery until 74. That's basically the core that WHM's gameplay is built around now, alongside using oGCDs to heal (you don't get your first of those until 50, and it's Benediction - this should probably be swapped with Tetragrammaton at 60).

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Originally Posted by ForsakenRoe

I would look at ARR's Class/Job split for this one.

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Agree with basically all of this post.

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Originally Posted by Renathras

The ability to choose Holy or Flare is not a difficult evolution, and it doesn't completely alter the rotation.

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It really does, though.

Prior to learning Vercombofinishers it is always acceptable to begin a melee combo with balanced Mana and it is always acceptable to cross colors in a Dualcast if it wouldn't overwrite a proc. After learning Vercombofinishers it's almost never okay to begin a melee combo with balanced Mana and it's not okay to cross colors over 50|50 if the first color was at +1 of the other color unless you have a Swiftcast or Acceleration to fix the resulting balance. For example if you're at 51|50 and have no Accelerations or Swiftcasts left, Verstone-Verthunder is a blunder because in the very likely event that it doesn't proc it leaves you at 56|56 with no way to fix it. The correct dualcast in that case would be Verstone-Veraero, which puts you at 62|50 and with the option to start a melee combo if it doesn't proc.

A lot of people think Verholy and Verflare are "just another button to press after the melee combo". They're not. Gaining them adds meaningful constraints to the RDM rotation that aren't there from Lv10 to Lv69. The rotation is therefore incomplete without them.

I would honestly just take all the level 50 skills for every class and make them level 1. Maybe level 10 if you wanted to really lower the learning curve.