Abilities locked behind 120s buffs

Although I understand there is a nice intent to make sure people push the buff buttons, now that they gate 600+ potencies spells on several jobs, I feel like for some jobs it wasn't thought through.

Indeed, some jobs have it gated by their 2min buff spell. So when you have two of those same jobs in an instance, you have no choice but to overlap buffs instead of making a better use of it.

It's not a major issue per say, but it's a bit frustrating. Double job is always suboptimal sure, but there is no fing reason double SMN or double RDM is even MORE suboptimal than any other jobs. As if the bottom DPS needed that in addition to their already limited damage.

Yeah it’s very goofy but SMN and RDM are only really there for their ability to res as far as the devs care about them. So any ability not in line with that will be met with a few potency buffs that are always too late to matter. Would just play pictomancer or black mage if you’re looking for them to actually do something.

You do make a great point though

Even outside of the situation you outline, it's annoying and feels bad. SCHs in particular have been upset that Baneful Impaction, an AoE DoT of all things, is a combo behind Chain Stratagem.

I cant think of a single class that got a new ability locked behind a 120 second CD that wouldn’t benefit from the same ability basically being on a 30 second CD or just a cap off to a long rotation

SCH getting baneful impaction as a 30 second CD locked behind ED, PCT being able to convert 5 white PIP’s to rainbow bright, GNB being able to spend extra cartridges to convert continuation into lion heart, glare 4 being generated from diacloud procs

All these skills could have thereotical much more interesting niches but as they stand they are all so boring (the only one that is even semi interesting is rainbow drip interacting with starry muse to make it a gain to cast it)

I didn't even think of that yet, and yes it's very dumb now that you mention it...

They make me wish their cool downs were shorter so I can use the flashy new skill more often.

I can’t help but wonder if they’ve stuck all these abilities between 120s cool downs is because they literally couldn’t figure out an interesting way to implement them into the actual toolkits. So they stuck them behind these abilities to give the impression of a ‘new’ ability without them having to do any actual thinking about the ability itself and how it fits.

Baneful Impaction is the perfect example, a DoT ability…with what’s essentially a 120s cool-down. Even just writing it down again made me facepalm so hard I think I cracked my skull (hey, maybe that explains all my unhinged posts…). Glare IV? More like Glare Bore! *canned laughter*. And wtf is up with Oracle? Like… why ? It just does a bit of damage and that’s it lol. At make it like reduce draw cool-down or give it the old Disable effect or something

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Originally Posted by Karshan

Although I understand there is a nice intent to make sure people push the buff buttons, now that they gate 600+ potencies spells on several jobs, I feel like for some jobs it wasn't thought through.

Indeed, some jobs have it gated by their 2min buff spell. So when you have two of those same jobs in an instance, you have no choice but to overlap buffs instead of making a better use of it.

It's not a major issue per say, but it's a bit frustrating. Double job is always suboptimal sure, but there is no fing reason double SMN or double RDM is even MORE suboptimal than any other jobs. As if the bottom DPS needed that in addition to their already limited damage.

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My issue with this is that I’m running out of hotkeys. I usually have the longer CDs binded to harder to reach buttons (i.e. #8 +) on my keyboard. My reasoning for this is that I only need to press it once so I don’t accidentally press another CD by accident. But with the implementation of DMG wpnskills/spells attached to these buffs, my chances of making errors increases, wasting potentially potent buffs. It also feels janky. It’s hands down the worst part of Dawntrail for me.

I wish they would make the simple rotations like pvp where the 1,2,3 combos are basically 1 button as opposed to 3. This would save a lot of hotbar space.

I think it's more to ease up on button bloat then to be this new job "mechanic"

They wanted to do as little as possible with the jobs this expansion. Adding 1 thing every 2min is just easier to balance than a cool new complex mechanic/tool

Thank you for your views. I'm not entirely sure why they did it nor do I curse their design, they are cool skills.
I'm just saying it puts some jobs at a disadvantage, because 120s buffs are one of the rare occurences of skills you'd want to sometimes DELAY ; And now it can be a DPS loss to do so. But only for some jobs, which I find unfair.

If really they want to reduce button bloat, they could put it in combo with other 120s that you do use on cooldown ALWAYS, no matter the encounter design. Or as some of you have mentioned, rethink them entirely.

Ah I see that more as a smidge of player agency and player gameplay that the game has not formularized and automated for us.

As in, this is truly good.

Say you got two Red Mages: You could overlap your buffs to ensure all of your abilities including the new oGCDs go under the full stack of raidbuffs. This would increase the damage of the red mage who makes that decision, sure.

BUT: This lowers the group damage. Who would do more damage if said Red Mage delays their burst cycle until after the first empower, and then does their burst. They personally deal less damage, but the group as a whole deals more = successful optimization by player interaction. Not gameplay mechanics.

This is important IMO, and it's sad so much of it was taken away.

2 min kills job design for sure..

I can't remember when I enjoyed FFXIV combat, 1 min was way better and more satisfying

aren't gonna lie as long as the game balance is toward the 2, minute burst I don't think they can fix much not gonna lie

If the cooldown could be shorter ppl would complain sadly :/ look at shadow bringer dancer ppl complained about dancer technical and step dance and boom it got an increase.