Death Design actually makes dungeons fun

I'm not speaking about applying death design or the way it's in the rotation, that's another story. I'm referring specifically to how every time you kill an enemy with Death Design up on them, you generate 10 gauge on RPR.

This actually rewards the player, and am I the only one that find it satisfying? If not, then I was thinking that perhaps more of similar mechanics could be introduced? They don't have to all be the same, the goal isn't to make everybody into RPR. But one could imagine variants like but not limited to:

- Anything hit by Flamethrower generates 1 Heat and/or 1 Battery (please give us AoE battery options SE, I beg of you), 1 per enemy hit.
- DRK's Sole Survivor Deluxe 2.0 back from the grave: Abyssal Drain the sea urchin of darkness inflicts targets with Sole Surviror debuff for X duration, every time an enemy with that debuff dies, the DRK heals for a certain amount (and recovers some MP?). DRK would finally gets its sustain, and it would prove skillful enough that the first half of a pull would rely on soaking everything with TBN until no MP, then when mobs start dying, the DRK starts healing out of it instead. And it's a win win, because it wouldn't even introduce a new button for the sake of button bloat!
- BRD: anything under the radius of effect of a song gets a small % chance of repertoire proccing. Rejoice for that the the glory days of Rain of Death (and soon PP) spamm are back?

I'm sure you can imagine other things for other jobs like this.

And Death Design is an ability introduce in EW, so that would be technically in line with the current job design no?

Irrelevant, jobs are designed for people who don't play them.

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Originally Posted by Valence

I'm not speaking about applying death design or the way it's in the rotation, that's another story. I'm referring specifically to how every time you kill an enemy with Death Design up on them, you generate 10 gauge on RPR.

This actually rewards the player, and am I the only one that find it satisfying? If not, then I was thinking that perhaps more of similar mechanics could be introduced? They don't have to all be the same, the goal isn't to make everybody into RPR. But one could imagine variants like but not limited to:

- Anything hit by Flamethrower generates 1 Heat and/or 1 Battery (please give us AoE battery options SE, I beg of you), 1 per enemy hit.
- DRK's Sole Survivor Deluxe 2.0 back from the grave: Abyssal Drain the sea urchin of darkness inflicts targets with Sole Surviror debuff for X duration, every time an enemy with that debuff dies, the DRK heals for a certain amount (and recovers some MP?). DRK would finally gets its sustain, and it would prove skillful enough that the first half of a pull would rely on soaking everything with TBN until no MP, then when mobs start dying, the DRK starts healing out of it instead. And it's a win win, because it wouldn't even introduce a new button for the sake of button bloat!
- BRD: anything under the radius of effect of a song gets a small % chance of repertoire proccing. Rejoice for that the the glory days of Rain of Death (and soon PP) spamm are back?

I'm sure you can imagine other things for other jobs like this.

And Death Design is an ability introduce in EW, so that would be technically in line with the current job design no?

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all these sound fine, esp the drk one for dungeon sustain

these also wouldnt do fuck for fights "that matter" so not like theyre unbalanced

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Originally Posted by Valence

This actually rewards the player, and am I the only one that find it satisfying? If not, then I was thinking that perhaps more of similar mechanics could be introduced? They don't have to all be the same, the goal isn't to make everybody into RPR. But one could imagine variants like but not limited to:

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It's a cool design and one of the things that drew me to reaper since I figured it would mean I would have more to do on trash packs than samurai. In actual play, what it usually worked out to was overcapping gauge and generally being annoyed. Which funnily enough, is a reaper specific problem, can't spend gauge while enshrouded. Go figure.

Anyway, sure, why not? Could be fun. But I would swear you are one of those anti-homogenization people so I find this post hilarious.

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Originally Posted by Valence

I'm referring specifically to how every time you kill an enemy with Death Design up on them, you generate 10 gauge on RPR.

This actually rewards the player, and am I the only one that find it satisfying?

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There used to be many such abilities in Heavensward. I never liked them. "Use this ability in the mere moments an enemy is about to die and gain." or "You can only use this ability when they're nearly dead."

A lot of people just didn't use those abilities, couldn't be bothered to use them, or found them a waste of hotbar space.

Those abilities (so called 'executes' to use common WoW parlance) were likely removed not because players didn't bother to use them or disliked them but because they increase DPS speed for certain parts of fights, normally the harder, later phases of boss fights.

So, in the name of balance and streamlining, like many things.

They also made more sense for a game that had adds during boss fights more than about one fight per expansion (p8n's snakes, e8's add phase and the goals on e4s are about all I can think of), not for a game where your rotation is basically abstracted from the boss you're fighting or whatever your teammates are doing.

Probably miss BRD's the most; MCH's just felt like it was there cuz BRD had one and NIN's animation locking made it tricky but they kept the skill sub level 60 and in PVP so you can tell they're more proud of the animations of their skills than their functions.

Dark Design is a happy medium IMO, you put it up anyways cuz it increases your damage and it also happens to make AoE much less boring on RPR be it in dungeons or FATEs. Dunno that EVERY job should have an equivalent, but if we're already gonna make trash as pointless as possible (I know I'm not the only one that wall-to-wall pulls blind on every new dungeon), I'm with the idea that we might as well change up AoE a teensy bit every now and then. It's another one of those places where the loss of TP management and normalizing AoE action shapes etc, while welcome for most players, left a very simple system that could probably use something more, especially given how much of leveling jobs and each daily roulette is composed of AoE spam.

I love the way reaper gains momentum on trash packs, starting slow and ending up like an unstoppable terminator that sweeps away worthless souls. It fits the job fantasy very well. The skill is also something I like in a single target rotation. We used to have a lot of dots to track and keep up but now almost no job has them or they are baked into a combo. This debuff is close enough and I hope SE doesn't take it away. Plenty of basic 123 combo rotations out there for those who don't like to press separate skills.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Death's Design

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Back in ARR and HW they used to have what I'd dub, "Execution" skills, and these actually persisted in some form up into Stormblood.

There was Mercy Stroke which came from Marauder and was available to use on WAR, DRK, PLD, DRG, and MNK. It was a 200 potency oGCD where if you killed the enemy with it, it'd heal you by 20% of your maximum HP. Fairly niche for its reward use, but for WAR main it was a 40 sec oGCD available the second the enemy got to 20% of their own HP, which in a raid fight meant that the last 20% of the fight you had more damage going out. For non-WARs it was a 90 second oGCD. It was the skill that allowed DRK to actually solo Turn 4 back in 3.2, not a big deal, but getting that heal was make or break at that level.

BRD has one that was like 15 second oGCD. I can never recall its name, but it was a big way for them to spike damage towards the end of boss fights. Misery's End I think. I don't think it had a reward, but it was basically free 4 actions per minute towards the last 20% of raid fights. Kind of a big deal.

SAM in Stormblood had Ageha, which gave 10 Kenki even if it didn't kill and then like 30 if did. Another nice thing to have towards the last 1/5th of long boss fights.

MCH had one originally called Heartbreak. Similar to Bard's. Low cooldown. Very nice for the end of longer fights for upping your damage.

DRK had Sole Survivor, which functioned a bit differently, being a minor debuff with a timer rather than an execution damage skill.

I think there were one or two more, but I can't really remember.

The idea behind these skills is that they were finishers, and imo, sort of a direction to think about how you might maximize your rotation in the final moments of a fight. When you've only got a minute or so left, then obviously you don't have the full breadth of the old 3 minute loops a lot of rotations were on. With the way some spenders like Kenki used to have multiple avenues to spend them, you could actually get gains from doing weird stuff like having your last GCD, no matter what it was, be buffed by Kaiten as a small gain at the very end of a fight etc.

Kind of niche, and not really something a lot of folks put thought into. Instead folks more think about how to sand bag so that some bloke can get their perfect burst right at the end of a fight for hounding parses, rather than the concept of a finishing touch.

Death's Design is kind of an elongation of the idea. You deal more damage when it's active, and then it also rewards you when they die. Good stuff. Kind of the refusal of them to completely let go of the concept, but also probably all we'll ever get with regards to it. Execution skills are dubbed that for two reasons, one being they execute the enemy and the other being that generally to get their reward you had to execute the skill itself at the right time.

A lot of people can't be assed to even do more than one combo, or maintain their own buffs, so they're likely never coming back. Gone the way of DoTs.

No complexity in my housing venue erp second life simulator please. Just pleasing taco cat eating stories and waifus and Good Guys R Us.

Death's Design is only fun in raids in mob fights that I can tag so many mobs I just get infinite gauge. DD in Single Target is just OG Dragoon Heavy Thrust.

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Originally Posted by Arkdra

It's a cool design and one of the things that drew me to reaper since I figured it would mean I would have more to do on trash packs than samurai. In actual play, what it usually worked out to was overcapping gauge and generally being annoyed. Which funnily enough, is a reaper specific problem, can't spend gauge while enshrouded. Go figure.

Anyway, sure, why not? Could be fun. But I would swear you are one of those anti-homogenization people so I find this post hilarious.

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I'm confused why you'd call this homogenization (did you read the specific mention about not making everybody into RPR?), but glad to entertain I guess, never mind that I said anything.

Sometimes I feel like making threads to praise what I find positive in the current design. I have already done it for other things, like Harrowing Hell. Would you like me to get more into a more convenient binary state of posting so that you can neatly label me a design reactionary perhaps?

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Originally Posted by Jeeqbit

There used to be many such abilities in Heavensward. I never liked them. "Use this ability in the mere moments an enemy is about to die and gain." or "You can only use this ability when they're nearly dead."

A lot of people just didn't use those abilities, couldn't be bothered to use them, or found them a waste of hotbar space.

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I mean, sole survivor was pretty good. People don't use abilities even today, and you'll always find people not using this or that. I'm sorry but I find your argument disingenuous, especially since you can just make said abilities a lot more usable by being very generous with timers and/or reapplicable easily (like death design). And some of those examples wouldn't even need timers.

Mercy stroke, those were the days! I'm definitely in support of bringing them back. The more rounded and options a job has the better.

Dungeons arent fun from the get go

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Originally Posted by Valence

I'm confused why you'd call this homogenization (did you read the specific mention about not making everybody into RPR?), but glad to entertain I guess, never mind that I said anything.
Sometimes I feel like making threads to praise what I find positive in the current design. I have already done it for other things, like Harrowing Hell. Would you like me to get more into a more convenient binary state of posting so that you can neatly label me a design reactionary perhaps?

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Naw, I don't think you're a design reactionary, or I would have blocked you. So mea culpa, could use Shoha 2 to apply a debuff that triggers something on enemy death. The differentiation would at least finally justify shoha 2's existence. The trick is what do you get?

If it's kenki it's pretty much 1:1 with soul gauge so it doesn't really meet the spirit of your idea.

Could be shoha pips, still pretty close to kenki but at least it would let you shoha more often. Shoha is a cool skill that you don't really get to use often enough I feel.

Could have it reduce cooldown on something, Gurren or Meikyo I suppose. But given the current 2 minute design, this would probably just be kind of annoying ultimately. Like the dungeons are mostly designed to have you show up at the boss door ready to 2 minute and this would definitely mess with that.

Alternately, and this would be hot garbage, but if you dump midare, senei, and ogi namakiri into 1 non-boss monster, they become zantetsuken ready and you can just kill them. This is like 6gcd's of single target damage in an aoe situation to kill 1 monster, thus making everybody elses aoe's less efficient so this is clearly suboptimal and bad. But it would be cool.

Yes, it would need to be something meaningful to the job and not redundant with the rest of the model. That's also probably why not every job would use it anyway. That's also why I stopped at 3 jobs even though I considered more without finding anything suitable (that, and I don't have 3 years of expansion development to pour into the idea tbh). On SAM I considered the - very - wild idea to get inspiration from pvp and introduce "kaiten ready" which you get after dashing, except here you'd get it when enemies die. In pvp this transforms the basic single target combo into its AoE variant with added special effects (bind, aoe potency, hp leech). Well let's say in pve you kill mobs with Tenka (or idk what), then it gives you a free 1 stack meikyo (activated automatically). Which brings the next Tenka sooner, etc etc.

Anyway, I have the feeling that the secret ingredient of the current pvp sauce lies in all the secondary effects that come attached to a lot of abilities there. This makes abilities not only more versatile and multipurpose, but it also triggers other effects that can be used cleverly.

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Originally Posted by Valence

Anything hit by Flamethrower generates 1 Heat and/or 1 Battery (please give us AoE battery options SE, I beg of you), 1 per enemy hit.

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Asking for Shoha II on MCH?

The better way is simply to replace Automaton Queen by a new Automaton that fires missiles on your target. Best scenario would be that bot to launch different attacks based on your own.
Then replace the "Call Missile Automaton" with "Big red button" where you order the Automaton to fire a very big missiles.

This way of doing the automaton would just fit MCH's current burst without adding more "button bloat".

Flamethrower should be straight up reworked, standing still is just not fun
I've proposed for it to be an Enshroud where instead of transforming yourself, you use the flamethrower for your GCDs.
But one other way could be to merge Flamethrower and Wildfire (It's pretty old), make Flamethrower a GCD that inflicts 5 stacks of "Burn" to ennemies.
Ennemies inflicted with burn receives XX extra potency from the owner of the debuff and generate X heat to the owner.

I believe it could be a fun way to rework Flamethrower.

Chatgpt gave me the answer, what a revelation:

EMP Discharge (oGCD)
Level Acquired: 100
Recast Time: 60s
Effect: Deals lightning damage with a potency of 300 to all nearby enemies. Stuns targets for 2s.
Additional Effect: Reduces the cooldown of Reassemble by 5s for each enemy hit.

Change the name (that was obviously stolen from SB pvp) with flamethrower :'D

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Originally Posted by Valence

Chatgpt gave me the answer, what a revelation:

EMP Discharge (oGCD)
Level Acquired: 100
Recast Time: 60s
Effect: Deals lightning damage with a potency of 300 to all nearby enemies. Stuns targets for 2s.
Additional Effect: Reduces the cooldown of Reassemble by 5s for each enemy hit.

Change the name (that was obviously stolen from SB pvp) with flamethrower :'D

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That's a good one; would add more dynamism to the job/fights.

I really miss Soul Survivor for as weird as it was.

Soul Survivor is actually great in DRK's pvp kit right now. It's kinda funny and sad to see all those old things being brought back into the currently superior job design in the game right now.

I personally hate the sound effect for both the single target and aoe.