Disappointed in Lv. 100 SGE

I may be in the minority here, but I feel like Lv. 100 SGE just isn't doing it for me. When SGE came out in Endwalker I had a lot of fun with it and when Dawntrail was announced I was excited to see how it would evolve. But when I finished leveling SGE and started playing it in max level content I found myself getting really bored. I wasn't expecting a major overhaul, but at least something that would make it feel different than how it plays at lv.90 except there wasn't. All we really got was some nice Quality of Life buffs, a lackluster capstone ability, and a new DPS button to press... *checks notes* twice per rotation, and not even on a GCD.

Overall it feels almost identical to how it plays at 90 with a very small difference and I'm honestly just not a fan. Isn't the point of job changes in expansion to expand on the job and give it new life? Again I don't want a complete overhaul, just something to make it feel different from how it played at Lv. 90.

The implication that expansions changes jobs is built on the idea the devs have literally any ideas what to do with the healers

None of the 4 healers have changed since the ShB overhaul except them continuing to attempt to redo AST’s card system every expansion

They have zero creative design decisions with the healers

I maxed out all Casters and none feel that different from there Level 90 Counterpart.

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Originally Posted by Ayalu

I maxed out all Casters and none feel that different from there Level 90 Counterpart.

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Oh it's not just Casters, my friends. I've finished leveling most classes, only WAR and PLD left. Most of them felt the same as their 90 counterpart with like an extra button or two if they're lucky. If not, well, you have SCH's Seraphism (I can't be the only one who thinks it's just a worse version of AST's Lightspeed, right?), WHM's Glare IV, which is on GCD for some reason, interfering with PoM's timer, SAM's Gyofu which looks identical to Hakaze which it supposedly replaces, oh, and *Insert DRK's list of complaints here*.

Only jobs I've taken to 100 have been SGE, DNC, PCT, and DRK. Picto aside, being new and all... none of these other jobs feel all that different to play at the new capstone. I think that, generally speaking, when CSU3 gets pretty damn comfortable with how X or Y job operates, the changes they make tend to be minimal. Friends who have played other jobs have for the most part supported this overall feeling of "sameness." I felt it somewhat with some jobs back in EW... but the feeling is stronger this time around. The idea of "different animation and potency bump" as some sort of "upgrade" in each expansion isn't one I'm too fond of. I'm not asking for a complete job overhaul, no, but... Idk, throw us a bone here. Give us something to actually look forward to when it comes to already-existing jobs.

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Originally Posted by Hazama999

Friends who have played other jobs have for the most part supported this overall feeling of "sameness."

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Honestly, I can understand this sentiment. The "Overhauls" they've made so far haven't always been great. Case in point: AST, SMN, SCH, DRK, DRG. The ones that's been left relatively unchanged have actually been the luckier ones.
I do agree with you that I wanted something to look forward to as I level, though. Some of the upgrades from SB to ShBr didn't sound significant but felt great, like SAM getting Tsubame. Not really new animation, but changes the way the job plays just a little bit, and fits the Job fantasy well. If only that trend continued.

To play devil's advocate, the devs did say that they were doing less with job changes this expansion in favor of making raid content more varied and appealing. How well they pulled that off is up to your own opinion.

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Originally Posted by ShaolinMike

To play devil's advocate, the devs did say that they were doing less with job changes this expansion in favor of making raid content more varied and appealing. How well they pulled that off is up to your own opinion.

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And they failed.. encounters are following the same structure with few different mechanics

I'm the opposite I main Reaper and didn't really want any changes to the way it plays, as everything that's new just slots in nicely. One of the reasons I used to like Monk as the class only slightly changed and "majority" of the skills fitted in nicely till around Shadowbringers I think.

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Originally Posted by ShaolinMike

To play devil's advocate, the devs did say that they were doing less with job changes this expansion in favor of making raid content more varied and appealing. How well they pulled that off is up to your own opinion.

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I do wonder if they only have one intern working at the game design department at times (excluding pvp, got a full new mode with 19 full brand new job designs for a single patch last expansion somehow).
I don't know where the game designers are and what they're working on to be fair. Nothing has changed on encounter designs so far, it's the same bricks with just more difficulty in dungeons and a better quality in savage.

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Originally Posted by Valence

I do wonder if they only have one intern working at the game design department at times (excluding pvp, got a full new mode with 19 full brand new job designs for a single patch last expansion somehow).
I don't know where the game designers are and what they're working on to be fair. Nothing has changed on encounter designs so far, it's the same bricks with just more difficulty in dungeons and a better quality in savage.

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NFT project and FF16

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Originally Posted by BabyYoda

And they failed.. encounters are following the same structure with few different mechanics

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That's just factually not true, mechanics are quite a lot more involved compared to previous tiers.

Source: Am pretty bad savage raider, and unlike previous tiers I'm sweating a ton in this one.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

That's just factually not true, mechanics are quite a lot more involved compared to previous tiers.

Source: Am pretty bad savage raider, and unlike previous tiers I'm sweating a ton in this one.

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Adding a mechanic is way different than encounter design..

The most unique encounter I have played is Ifrit and Garuda in ShB which is not that far from others but it is a good jump compare to what we got now.

Encounter design in FFXIV is one dimensional and each expansion they try to add new mechanic to a design that 6 years old since ShB.

not even boss this tier blows me away like how Ifrit and Garuda in ShB..

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Originally Posted by Tunda

Adding a mechanic is way different than encounter design..

The most unique encounter I have played is Ifrit and Garuda in ShB which is not that far from others but it is a good jump compare to what we got now.

Encounter design in FFXIV is one dimensional and each expansion they try to add new mechanic to a design that 6 years old since ShB.

not even boss this tier blows me away like how Ifrit and Garuda in ShB..

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Ifraruda is a bad example because while it’s a unique encounter by post ShB launch standards it’s uniqueness is just annoying and pointlessly boring

The biggest example of this conflag strike, conflag strike is arguably the single worst tank mechanic we have ever gotten (the only other competitor would be the the dragon swap in O10) and represents a wider problem with E6’s encounter design. E6 (and conflag strike especially) had periods of enforced downtime on particular roles when the boss was targetable and there was zero way you could strategise to earn more uptime

Let’s take a comparison, arguably edens best design mechanic in junction shiva. In junction shiva the “basic” stat is to have everyone simply run all the way to the edge of the platform at the opposite end of where their icicle is and pop arms length/surecast. This was “easy” but it enforces melee downtime and excessive running for casters. However if you were confident on your statics organisation and positioning you can actually do a star shaped rotation on the icicles so that the melee can take the edge of the boss’s hitbox opposite to their icicle and be safe as long as nobody is in their way

Going back to E6 this type of optimisation around conflag or even soccer strat is just impossible, there is no way to optimise more uptime out of conflag strike, you stand at the edge of the arena and you press shield lob and you be sad

Eden was very good about offering opened ended mechanics that could give you more uptime if you knew what you are doing but E6 was just so badly designed on this front

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

Ifraruda is a bad example because while it’s a unique encounter by post ShB launch standards it’s uniqueness is just annoying and pointlessly boring

The biggest example of this conflag strike, conflag strike is arguably the single worst tank mechanic we have ever gotten (the only other competitor would be the the dragon swap in O11) and represents a wider problem with E6’s encounter design. E6 (and conflag strike especially) had periods of enforced downtime on particular roles when the boss was targetable and there was zero way you could strategise to earn more uptime

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Although, I will say that if uptime can be retained, melee as a role loses its reason to exist (as a separate role).

That is, "melee" is only a thing because historically you took two steps back for two steps forward:

* You were in range of 360° cleaves and hence took a lot of damage compared to any other damage-centric job (note that back then, something like this had to visual to warn you, and no castbar, it was a random proc on a boss autoattack that all melees get hit by the AA not just the tank).
* You would lose 100% or near-100% if you had to leave melee range for whatever reason.
* In return, you did significantly higher damage than anybody else, except maybe in specific designs (see bolt casters in early DAoC due to its PvP focus). Often on the level of 50%-100% more damage, to account for the high loss of uptime for leaving melee or dying to cleaves.
* You also had higher defenses. This was more of a utility thing, as in raid content this was not enough to protect you (though non-melees could never survive cleaves, you could to a degree) but outside of raids you could tank quite a lot compared to other non-tanks.

In FFXIV, this is largely eroded. Importantly, many raid bosses nowadays are designed to account for melees always being able to attack every GCD, never missing one, and also to trivialize the effect of missing positionals so that it's not a determining factor in victory vs defeat, only in the degree of ease with which you kill a savage boss.

This is... annoying. It's like letting casters always cast without forcing them to move, or removing castbars from Summoner, or removing randomness from Dancer, or removing the need to be healed externally from tanks: It removes what makes the role, well, the role itself. If as a melee I don't trade significant danger and the necessity to intentionally drop to ~0 damage via leaving melee for significantly higher overall damage output and hence a penchant for greeding hits, I'm just not playing a melee DPS.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Although, I will say that if uptime can be retained, melee as a role loses its reason to exist (as a separate role).

That is, "melee" is only a thing because historically you took two steps back for two steps forward:

* You were in range of 360° cleaves and hence took a lot of damage compared to any other damage-centric job (note that back then, something like this had to visual to warn you, and no castbar, it was a random proc on a boss autoattack that all melees get hit by the AA not just the tank).
* You would lose 100% or near-100% if you had to leave melee range for whatever reason.
* In return, you did significantly higher damage than anybody else, except maybe in specific designs (see bolt casters in early DAoC due to its PvP focus). Often on the level of 50%-100% more damage, to account for the high loss of uptime for leaving melee or dying to cleaves.
* You also had higher defenses. This was more of a utility thing, as in raid content this was not enough to protect you (though non-melees could never survive cleaves, you could to a degree) but outside of raids you could tank quite a lot compared to other non-tanks.

In FFXIV, this is largely eroded. Importantly, many raid bosses nowadays are designed to account for melees always being able to attack every GCD, never missing one, and also to trivialize the effect of missing positionals so that it's not a determining factor in victory vs defeat, only in the degree of ease with which you kill a savage boss.

This is... annoying. It's like letting casters always cast without forcing them to move, or removing castbars from Summoner, or removing randomness from Dancer, or removing the need to be healed externally from tanks: It removes what makes the role, well, the role itself. If as a melee I don't trade significant danger and the necessity to intentionally drop to ~0 damage via leaving melee for significantly higher overall damage output and hence a penchant for greeding hits, I'm just not playing a melee DPS.

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Yes that’s specifically why I said you should be able to do strats to get more uptime hit it shouldn’t be built into the encounter and is why I mentioned junction shiva. You just could not remotely do full uptime junction shiva in anything besides a high performing static and it still had a high failure rate

I don’t really really have that much of a problem with 100% uptime but it has to be earned and it has to be hard to earn (again promise is a masterclass of a tier to represent this)

The problem comes with panda fights that basically worked off the assumption that 100% uptime is a given but didn’t nerf melee to compensate

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Originally Posted by Supersnow845

The implication that expansions changes jobs is built on the idea the devs have literally any ideas what to do with the healers

None of the 4 healers have changed since the ShB overhaul except them continuing to attempt to redo AST’s card system every expansion

They have zero creative design decisions with the healers

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I mean, Sage is litterally a half copy of SCH and AST on release was also a pseudo WHM (with cards).
Zero might be a bit harsh, I kind of like the lilly system. I feel like AST got some fun abilities such as horoscope, macrocosme and earthly star.

But yeah overall, they're not very inspired.

WHM got no lilly upgrade since its instauration in ShB
SCH fairy gauge has been useless since its instauration. I still don't know what it is here.

AST can't complain they're not trying to do something with the cards.
Sage well... I feel like Phylosophia fits neatly. it's not insanely original but it fits the job.

I remember going through Pandy raids as a Monk to help my FC train new raiders then Thordan unreal came out and I stayed on monk and then got hit with how small the hitbox on Thordan was and the other enemies in that encounter.
Honestly even though HW probably caused me so much pain in my teenage years especially with Alexander savage, I'm really starting to miss it compared to the current game.