Talent tree (spec) suggestion

Why do I believe talent tree would work for Tanks more than DPS jobs in ffxiv?

usually games have sub-roles specially PVP focused games,

there are more than 1 dps, there is a marksman, bruiser, assassin, controller/support.

but I don't this will work on FFXIV DPS jobs, but what if this could work for tanks? and how?
we are having currently 2 sub-roles for tanks which is tank/off-tank.

do you think this could work for tanks that allow them to have 2 skill trees each tree will focus on being Main tank or Off tank?

Main tanks: have their damage depending on receiving damage like how revenge and TBN work.
Off tank: doing more damage by not receiving damage, like how PLD shield could explode if no one attack them.

Wouldn't work, let's go through each content.

Dungeons, 1 tank, always MT.

Normal trials/8 man raids, you can enter either on MT spec or OT spec and have no guarantee on being on the right one, 50% chance your damage is neutered for no reason.

Alliance raids, dependant on whether the raid requires each tank to MT at some point, you will have the wrong spec.

Extreme trials, Savage and Ultimate. With tank swaps, you will be MTing/OTing at some point, calling it even, 50% of the time you will be less effective, just because.

This is before we get into the logistics of having to keep swapping depending on the content you do, where, for most of it, it is a coin toss whether you have the right one or not.

So, for me, it falls flat before you even start looking at how you would change the jobs.

Talent trees don't really work, they are an illusion of choice there is always a meta build, and inferior builds. As Mikey said, due to how flexible MT and OT is in XIV, this idea will fall flat, it would not bring anything new or interesting to how jobs work.

The only tank this could have any chance of working for is dark knight and only if there's a self sustain tree where instead of Oblation you get warrior's Equilibrium and Abyssal Drain becomes a GCD that costs 1500MP and untied from Carve and Spit. You know most dark knights would choose this. But for pretty much every other job, it would be an illusion of choice so I can't get behind it

"Talent trees are an illusion of choice, there's always meta builds." Yes. But it's better than no choice at all. So long as the difference between "meta build" and "non-meta" build isn't so large it takes appreciably more time to clear a given piece of content, who cares? If I'm going to work I have two choices: 1. Take the interstate and get there fast but be bored. 2. Take the route through the hills and have a wonderful time but take three minutes extra" yeah, on an average day I'll obviously go 1 but who cares if someone else goes 2 or if I feel like going 2 once in a while? Oh no, my coworkers will have to deal with me getting there on time instead of 5 minutes early. They won't remember that an hour into work so who cares?

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Originally Posted by aodhan_ofinnegain

Talent trees don't really work, they are an illusion of choice there is always a meta build, and inferior builds.

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Different types of content would have different 'metas', and the ability for people to experiment and engage in discourse about it opens up a whole new metagame for people to engage with. I do not think a talent system would fit FFXIV (at least, in its current iteration of job design), but I hear the 'illusion of choice' argument all the time in WoW discussions and it never holds any water. Having a choice is better than not.

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Originally Posted by NegativeS

Having a choice is better than not.

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In a vacuum, yes. But as WoW has amiably shown over the years with its many many many iterations of both talent trees and other systems, it's not in a vacuum, rather talent trees drain dev time, proportion to the amount of fake choices you want to offer. Sure, you could always go the GW2 route, that between its massive amount of choice for skills and weapons coupled with specs just gave up, throws 100 things at the wall and hopes 5 skills, 2 weapons and a few talents stick (enough to make 1 full spec), but even then you gotta bugfix/maintain the others (and GW2 famously had very broken skills for very long based on not doing bugfixing).

So no, it's not necessarily better. If we assume that devs don't have enough management-cleared job rework time to get balancing done or fixing DRK or nerfing Picto or removing Viper and coming up with a concept that actually feels unique and interesting and viper-y instead, then we got to assume that this would become even slower and also that implementing talent trees would take an equivalently long time. So we'd have the talent trees for the first role by 10.0 or so. :P

Or they could work in giving Cool down's dual purposes to fit different situations without relying on stances. Kinda how Shake it off can use warriors defensive cool downs to increase it's shielding to the party and could assist in extending the theme of each job without necessarily adding in more buttons yet giving more options.

I do actually like the idea behind the post here, the arguments against seem to be "illusion of choice!" Well I rather have the Illusion then just not have it all, funnily enough not everyone's a top end meta slave. creativity and the lack of actual variance is why people are generally upset with current job design, I rather SE try new things like this then stagnate with current design.

Some builds going to more a MT, or more a OT, or variants like AOE sustain would add some interest, I do think you'd need a quick switch system before combat in place for this to work for OT's.

Personally what I'd want is certain Cooldowns to have selectable upgrades, such as lasting longer, adding a additional effect, being able to share a defensive with another tank but weaker, shorter cooldown Ect, theirs a lot you can do with Tanks & Healers.

I do think a system like this would leave out Dps for the most part, as trying to change damage cooldowns and how they interact is going to be something next to impossible to even balance, but I could see ways of giving DPS slightly more cooldowns that help (such as mantra, Addle ect). giving them variances and Physical ranged of course has more unique cooldowns, so even in the case of dps we can argue that theirs room for utility variance.

I believe talent trees can work but only if they're designed in a way that answers a player's need rather than a meta.
In short, no choices involving DPS potential but utility.

For example what if you had to choose between an extra dash or an sprint with a shorter cooldown?
What if you had to choose between GNB's Aurora reducing damage taken or stronger healing?
What if DRK could ditch Living Dead's healing effect but its cooldown is reduced?

You could have choices to compensate the lack of a specific job.
The hardest part is to design the talent well enough to answer the player's need rather than answer a fight specific need or a meta.

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

I believe talent trees can work but only if they're designed in a way that answers a player's need rather than a meta.
In short, no choices involving DPS potential but utility.

For example what if you had to choose between an extra dash or an sprint with a shorter cooldown?
What if you had to choose between GNB's Aurora reducing damage taken or stronger healing?
What if DRK could ditch Living Dead's healing effect but its cooldown is reduced?

You could have choices to compensate the lack of a specific job.
The hardest part is to design the talent well enough to answer the player's need rather than answer a fight specific need or a meta.

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I mean the main thing really is you'd need an actual reason to design it too when the current design works just fine. Got a role you want but have particular needs? Scroll on through until you find one. If not, then maybe it's not your kind of role.

Having seen many KRMMO's try a talent tree system, all that ends up happening is you pick a particular meta for your kind of job or you get laughed out of existence or just will have a much worse time overall if you don't pick the "correct" path. Want to try a hand at talent trees currently? Meld materia...oh wait, we pick Crit/Det/DH when not picking the Speed you need because Tenacity and Piety are memes.

I'd rather not have an illusion of choice but given how much effort would need to be put in there to make it not your typical KRMMO system, that effort could be better spent elsewhere. It's why this suggestion really doesn't work for this kind of game.

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

I believe talent trees can work but only if they're designed in a way that answers a player's need rather than a meta.
In short, no choices involving DPS potential but utility.

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Of course.

But, WoW in fact already tried this. They did a system where you had 6 lines, each where you pick one of three choices. And they never (well, about never) related to your primary function, they were always either utility or off-role.

Was kinda fun, but was ultimately scrapped again for an interesting reason: It didn't make players feel like their choices mattered, so they picked whatever was "meta" anyways (as even these utility things obviously had stuff that worked better or worse depending on what content you did, for example in many movement centric fights the Priest picking Angelic Feathers for extra on-demand runspeed for the whole group was amazing, much as that was balanced against the other two picks in a vacuum).

It just... can't be done. Like what you say there, extra dash vs shorter sprint CD, does the fight have a lot of disconnects? Easily dash. Otherwise: Sprint, faster moving through cities. You just end up swapping constantly. Likewise Aurora, do you expect to use it on another tank with you the offtank or are you tanking yourself: Pick damage reduction. Otherwise, go with more healing. Etc etc etc. There is no balance that doesn ot affect your fight enough for people to not "just go meta", and then fights having to be balanced around these meta picks being present 100% of the time, punishing those who pick something else.

Thank you all for sharing your interest,

regarding how skill trees could work yes I believe it can work with the current tank design, but not dps and maybe healers.

I want to bring skill specialization system in T&L, it is a great example on how this system could work.

Like tank stance here is options:

1- tank stance will 100% give you aggro for 100% of the time. (MT)
2- tank stance will be an activation skill each 30s and it will give you aggro for 10s + additional buff to damage skills. (OT)

GCD AoE skills:

1- circle shape that garenties hit 15 yalm around you.
2- straight forward hit for 30 yalm but radios is lower to 7 yalm.

things like that could work giving people a choice that won't have high impact in fflog but it would matter for player experience.

things like double down from gunbreaker, they could add options to the skill:

1- it will cost 2 cartage for each 30s with damage adjusted
2- it will cost 1 cartage for each 60s with damage adjusted

it wont matter in the end it depends on people perspective of people like to have faster skills or not

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Originally Posted by BabyYoda

Like tank stance here is options:

1- tank stance will 100% give you aggro for 100% of the time. (MT)
2- tank stance will be an activation skill each 30s and it will give you aggro for 10s + additional buff to damage skills. (OT)

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If you can tank with option 2, that will be the default, if you cannot do that, you will be useless about 50% of the time and it will be something that needs fixing.

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Originally Posted by BabyYoda

GCD AoE skills:

1- circle shape that garenties hit 15 yalm around you.
2- straight forward hit for 30 yalm but radios is lower to 7 yalm.

things like that could work giving people a choice that won't have high impact in fflog but it would matter for player experience.

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Straight line for your GCD AoE aggro generators is a bad shape, so in this case, circle will be picked. The only other shape that could work is a cone, as per old Overpower. This is more of a personal choice, however I suspect most will stick to the circle as it is easier to use. This is however the closest you get to a fair choice.

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Originally Posted by BabyYoda

things like double down from gunbreaker, they could add options to the skill:

1- it will cost 2 cartage for each 30s with damage adjusted
2- it will cost 1 cartage for each 60s with damage adjusted

it wont matter in the end it depends on people perspective of people like to have faster skills or not

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Assuming your got your cooldowns backwards here (1 cartridge every 30 seconds or 2 cartridges every 60 seconds), then the 2 cartridges every 60 seconds will be the one that is used. Not only will it put more damage into the buff window (not even looking at the raid buff windows here), but Double Down every 30 seconds is not viable as you will not have the available cartridges to use without it conflicting with Gnashing Fang combo. This is a straight one is better than the other, not just for pure DPS, but also just in how the job flows in general.

Yeah all of these ideas for "optional picks" just have one very clearly superior option. You are all just showcasing why these systems don't work.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Yeah all of these ideas for "optional picks" just have one very clearly superior option. You are all just showcasing why these systems don't work.

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Disagree. (outside of DPS options, because then you just pick whatever does more damage)

Things like Mitigation and/or healing will have more value in different situations and can actually be fight dependent.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

Things like Mitigation and/or healing will have more value in different situations and can actually be fight dependent.

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Ah, that's what you meant.

Yeah, I don't think that can work either, since that just creates the problem WoW used to have with per-fight-talent-specs, but worse. If the value is actually different per spec, people will just default in their picks. Like the option with the Aurora above, there's very clearly one superior choice for each context. So for one fight you pick X, for the other you pick Y, but you just apply that like swapping a character job before joining a group.

But then you loop it back to the designers, what do they do now? Do they balance for the assumption that everyone has the superior pick, codifying the "pick superior for each fight" thing? Or do they not, making the fight easier if everyone does just go with the meta picks anyways?

There's no truly good option there. The only way out would be actually not offer any primary (and DPS is always a primary role for everyone I suppose, granted) power gain at all, but even that is something WoW (and GW2, too) tried, and neither could make it stick. GW2 actually did a bit better with it's strong focus away from traditional roles coupled with giving everyone a dedicated healing button. But even that immediately had meta picks for certain situations which were quite visibly outperforming other options.

But don't get me wrong, I love talent trees and picks and all that. I just don't see it ever working in a manner that isn't essentially the same as not having that choice in the first place. At least not in MMORPGs, it works fine in single-player games of course. More so if they're story-driven and hence most players don't get a second try at doing their talent setup anyways and have to pick while not knowing whether/how useful this'll be later.

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Originally Posted by Rithy255

Disagree. (outside of DPS options, because then you just pick whatever does more damage)

Things like Mitigation and/or healing will have more value in different situations and can actually be fight dependent.

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But then you are choosing based on the fight and not what you want. Which is, again, an illusion of choice.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

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I think when you look at it at your angle yeah, it wont work for people trying to optimise literally everything, I personally don't think the game should have to suffer because of people being against any sort of creativity.

If you look at the Jobs themselves, you could argue that it's pointless having more then one job of the same category, because one will almost always be less useful in the same category then another, but regardless people still play that job because it's fun for them. I see it the same if we could customise some aspects about jobs, then the more casual or even midcore side who doesn't worry too much about top end would be more free to be creative and have fun, while the upper end 1% can just go with whatever's meta, We see people still running suboptimal jobs that are clearly outclassed because a lot of people actually just go based off what they enjoy

I'm just honestly sad that this game is only balanced for savage and ultimate's because it's ruined any creativity the jobs themselves can have, I think it does work for MMO's it just doesn't work for whats "meta". It's really pointless to strive for only balance, FF14 needs to lean back into fun and creativity with jobs.

while I don't think talent trees would be the solution, I do think it would be something actually more fun and interesting then what we usually get (which is small number tweaks and/if a job feels unique it gets reworked so it can fit in line). I just rather they try with something interesting then the same old balance that we're getting, it's clearly not actually popular to just balance everything for the 1%

Instead of a talent tree, I'd rather see SE demand more "talent" by the player. Go back to having tank stances with damage down and Cleric Stance with damage up/heal down.

Take tank stance for a second. Enmity is a resource. A tank keeps hate whether they are 1 "unit" of enmity above #2 on the hate list or 1 million "units" above. This resource should have value. We should be able to turn off our ability to accrue hate at an absurd rate (and it IS absurd) and increase our damage instead.

When it comes to enmity, it is possible to do tank swaps while one of the tanks has NO idea what they are doing. Let's say MT is clueless - MT takes the tankbuster with debuff... OT provokes. Takes the hit. OT Shirks. Hate is back on MT. MT does nothing.

Let's say OT is clueless. MT takes the tankbuster and the debuff. MT Shirks. OT takes the hit. MT Provokes. Hate is back on MT. OT had to do nothing.

And while they are at it, they shouldn't have changed accessories. HP is another resource. You are alive whether you have 1 HP or 200,000 HP. If you don't need 200,000, exchange some of that HP for more STR (and more damage). Change the damage formula again and let tanks use STR accessories and meld STR.

None of this will ever happen of course. The game is simplified in almost every way imaginable. But, a return to ARR tank stance and healer stance would demand higher skill by the playerbase.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

Go back to having tank stances with damage down and Cleric Stance with damage up/heal down

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That did not work while "more damage = more good" remains true. There is no incentive to be outside of high-damage-mode, ever, it's a crutch because you, your gear, your group or the fight is bad and mean to you. As soon as you can, you go damage-mode-only. Because the boss being dead is the best mitigation possible. And at that point, you might as well just not have the second stance and all the smoke&mirrors making you believe having two stances and the emnity-dance from them matters, no?

... ah yeah, that's why it works the way it does nowadays. xD

Unless tanks are top DPS, I don't see how they maintain hate without tank stance on, at least a little bit. So, they'd have to enmity dance.

I always loved the idea of skill trees or anything that gives the player some kind of agency with their character’s growth. Sadly I don’t imagine we’ll ever get anything even remotely close to that. SE literally doesn’t even trust us to meld our own materia - hence why every stat that’s not crit or direct hit is worthless. Because SE genuinely thinks we’re so stupid we wouldn’t be able to decide what to use if there were more than 2 options.

If we got a ‘skill tree’ it would just be a literal ladder upwards and not a tree, so it would be a complete waste of resources over just making us learn those skills normally through levelling.

Plus the community would ruin it anyway because it wouldn’t matter how perfectly they balanced the ‘tree’, people would parse the absolute fuck out of the skills to determine which is mathematically superior and you’d be forced to get them or get kicked which cannot happen in FFXIV (see: cross classing lol). This is why we can’t have nice things lol

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Originally Posted by dspguy

Instead of a talent tree, I'd rather see SE demand more "talent" by the player. Go back to having tank stances with damage down and Cleric Stance with damage up/heal down.

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Tank stances didn't work as intended and were more of a punishment for tanks rather than a benefit. All I will say on Cleric stance is that as a less than average healer, I didn't enjoy Cleric Stance.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

Take tank stance for a second. Enmity is a resource. A tank keeps hate whether they are 1 "unit" of enmity above #2 on the hate list or 1 million "units" above. This resource should have value. We should be able to turn off our ability to accrue hate at an absurd rate (and it IS absurd) and increase our damage instead.

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You never said how you wanted to increase damage damage, so, how?

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Originally Posted by dspguy

When it comes to enmity, it is possible to do tank swaps while one of the tanks has NO idea what they are doing. Let's say MT is clueless - MT takes the tankbuster with debuff... OT provokes. Takes the hit. OT Shirks. Hate is back on MT. MT does nothing.

Let's say OT is clueless. MT takes the tankbuster and the debuff. MT Shirks. OT takes the hit. MT Provokes. Hate is back on MT. OT had to do nothing.

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For the vast majority of tank busters, once the cast starts, it isn't changing target. Plus, any content where a tank swap actually matters (Extreme and above), the tanks should know how to tank swap, making this a non issue.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

And while they are at it, they shouldn't have changed accessories. HP is another resource. You are alive whether you have 1 HP or 200,000 HP. If you don't need 200,000, exchange some of that HP for more STR (and more damage). Change the damage formula again and let tanks use STR accessories and meld STR.

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Then it just comes to finding the minimum VIT needed to survive and using enough accessories to hit that limit. This is basically how accuracy worked in the past, and that wasn't generally liked.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

None of this will ever happen of course. The game is simplified in almost every way imaginable. But, a return to ARR tank stance and healer stance would demand higher skill by the playerbase.

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No it wouldn't. Tank stances never achieved what people thought they did. It was always, tank stance > enmity combo, go to DPS stance and stay there for the rest of the fight. It would be the same now. There are so many other things I won't go into except 1. How would you accurately track how much enmity you have relative to everyone else so you can min/max as much as possible.

Yeah this sounds to me like "game is too simplified" just is meant to mean "please re-add all the menial busywork that had 0 complexity or difficulty and was just a long, annoying, checklist to go through but it filled my evening and needed no thought"?

And even that we still have! Farm mats for buff food! Craft buff food! You can still do this menial work. We even still got gear-checkpoints like specific amonts of SKS or SPS. You can do it!

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

You never said how you wanted to increase damage damage, so, how?

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Tank stance up - damage down, enmity up.
Tank stance off, damage up. No enmity. Just like it was back in ARR.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

For the vast majority of tank busters, once the cast starts, it isn't changing target. Plus, any content where a tank swap actually matters (Extreme and above), the tanks should know how to tank swap, making this a non issue.

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That's the whole point. The way tanking is designed right now, the tank counterpart doesn't have to know anything. I've tested this on EX3 as noted in my previous post. So it's a double tankbuster with a debuff (pretty standard stuff). MT would get hit first, OT vokes during first tankbuster and then eats the second tankbuster. I can Voke/Shirk or Shirk/Voke without the other tank even having to do anything. Because managing enmity means nothing anymore.

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

Then it just comes to finding the minimum VIT needed to survive and using enough accessories to hit that limit. This is basically how accuracy worked in the past, and that wasn't generally liked.

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Yes, it does come down to finding minimum VIT needed. At least there's something to think about. I was a fan of accuracy - gave us something to think about gear-wise instead of it simply being "highest iLvl with least Skill/Spell speed." How engaging...

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Originally Posted by Mikey_R

No it wouldn't. Tank stances never achieved what people thought they did. It was always, tank stance > enmity combo, go to DPS stance and stay there for the rest of the fight. It would be the same now. There are so many other things I won't go into except 1. How would you accurately track how much enmity you have relative to everyone else so you can min/max as much as possible.

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The built-in hate meter? Right now, it has zero value. MT is always full with an "A". Everyone else is empty with 2-8, with the caveat that if you have an OT they are likely almost full at #2. If anything, the hate meter has no value right now. No one needs it. It is one of the reasons some players utilize damage meters so they can see "how" far ahead they are, since it isn't like you can tell by using the enmity meter.

It's ok to disagree. Some players like things having flavor (stance dancing), some complication (gear selection) and some collaboration (tank swaps). In the current game, we have essentially none of that. I'm not saying everything they changed since ARR was bad. They did a lot right. But oversimplifying almost every aspect of the game takes much of the joy and satisfaction out of an achievement.

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Originally Posted by Carighan

Yeah this sounds to me like "game is too simplified" just is meant to mean "please re-add all the menial busywork that had 0 complexity or difficulty and was just a long, annoying, checklist to go through but it filled my evening and needed no thought"?

And even that we still have! Farm mats for buff food! Craft buff food! You can still do this menial work. We even still got gear-checkpoints like specific amonts of SKS or SPS. You can do it!

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To each their own I suppose. While there was much wrong about how tanks played in ARR and HW (such as losing your WAR gauge when changing tank stance), it made for something to think about it.

As it stands now, you see the red circle for tank buster. You hit a button, you live. Before, you had to time (for example), when to switch to tank stance to either build up your gauge before the tank buster (if Infuriate isn't up), and to time that 10s CD to put Defiance back up, etc etc.

I know in the end we are just clacking away at our keyboards and spamming the mouse button (or controller buttons), so it is all menial work no matter how you look at it - but if actually having to "think" about your job was menial work, then clearly we should just play those "tap the screen" games that my kids play on their phones.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

That's the whole point. The way tanking is designed right now, the tank counterpart doesn't have to know anything. I've tested this on EX3 as noted in my previous post. So it's a double tankbuster with a debuff (pretty standard stuff). MT would get hit first, OT vokes during first tankbuster and then eats the second tankbuster. I can Voke/Shirk or Shirk/Voke without the other tank even having to do anything. Because managing enmity means nothing anymore.

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But you won't get away with that every fight, which I did allude to. However, doesn't stop the fact it is literally a non-issue (not to mention it would work exactly the same if tank stances were involved).

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Originally Posted by dspguy

Yes, it does come down to finding minimum VIT needed. At least there's something to think about. I was a fan of accuracy - gave us something to think about gear-wise instead of it simply being "highest iLvl with least Skill/Spell speed." How engaging...

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Getting to a required minimum isn't much more 'engaging' either. It would just be a case of, put the stats into a calculator, and it spits out your BiS.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

The built-in hate meter? Right now, it has zero value. MT is always full with an "A". Everyone else is empty with 2-8, with the caveat that if you have an OT they are likely almost full at #2. If anything, the hate meter has no value right now. No one needs it. It is one of the reasons some players utilize damage meters so they can see "how" far ahead they are, since it isn't like you can tell by using the enmity meter.

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This next bit should have followed on if you had actually properly responded to what you quoted and that was the fact you wanted to use enmity as a resource (of which you responded with how tank stances worked in the past, which is irrelevant). The point here being, if you want to use enmity as a resource, which implies you want it to be expended in some way, you need to be able to accurately track how much you have. Not just that, how far ahead of second place you are. I was curious about how you would solve that problem, which would also highlight how much thought you put into the idea.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

It's ok to disagree. Some players like things having flavor (stance dancing), some complication (gear selection) and some collaboration (tank swaps). In the current game, we have essentially none of that. I'm not saying everything they changed since ARR was bad. They did a lot right. But oversimplifying almost every aspect of the game takes much of the joy and satisfaction out of an achievement.

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If 'flavour' is use tank stance to get an enmity lead, then swap to DPS stance for the rest of the fight, then that is a very low bar. Gear selection complication? Not really. Tank Swaps? Already done, though apparently not so much on DT so far. But, how many of these things are actually solved by tank stances? 1. The whole stance dance thing, which, again, wouldn't accomplish what you wanted. I have made many, many posts that are way too long going over all the details of the old stances and how they didn't accomplish what people wanted from them, and how they were a punishment for the tank, rather than a reward. If you want to make a similar system, you need to rework it into something better.

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Originally Posted by dspguy

I know in the end we are just clacking away at our keyboards and spamming the mouse button (or controller buttons), so it is all menial work no matter how you look at it - but if actually having to "think" about your job was menial work, then clearly we should just play those "tap the screen" games that my kids play on their phones.

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Yeah it's a lot of personal perspective, to me the rigid nature of combat design in FFXIV reduces all these things to menial work. I'm not thinking when to swap stance or press a button. I don't need to see that red circle on myself. I know I do it 3 GCDs after ability XYZ dealt raid damage. Because that's how things align.

Of course, if fight design were entirely more random and fluid, we'd have significantly less balance and the playerbase would riot, but in that case I can see a lot of mechanics being reactionary in nature and hence requiring active attention.

Come to think of it, that's a good way of putting it anyways: Even mechanics designed to be reactionary (like pressing an invuln) have become proactive due to the way fight design has coelesced into a strict ordered checklist over the years, making complexity on the character's side automatically add 0 depth and hence be complexity just for complexity's sake. It could work, but not while the fight design precludes depth in character design.