I wish battles wouldn't punish us for doing too much damage

[BlaiseArath]

A "good" DpS has mastered the rotation that does the most damage. A Great DpS knows when and where adds will spawn, when mechanics starts occurring and how to deal with them, what abilities can and should be interrupted, how to avoid or mitigate AoEs, and deals enough damage that the fight does not break and cause a wipe.

I get what you're saying, and honestly its all good advice... so you're right... up until the bolded part, where I must disagree... Though not entirely, as you will see by my final statement below.

If a DPS is being punished for DPSing, its not so much bad game design as it is extremely poor foresight, You are literally being punished for just being exceptional at your job, this is absolutely unacceptably terrible. And What does this spell for SMN? They can't just "Stop" their DoTs when a phase push comes close, and if your advice is to stop applying DoTs at an arbitrary % close to phase shift, you're essentially asking a SMN to be even more useless. If a DPS doing their job, and by doing their job I mean everything you mentioned except the bolded part, and you can manage to "Break" the fight and cause an instant-wipe, its poor game design. I shouldn't have to count to 5 between each of my combo buttons just so the last boss in Haukke doesn't Deus Ex Deathga the group.

It is absolutely vital and key to being a good player in general to be aware of Phases, DPS or otherwise, and to know when each is coming up, but theres also Ramuh Extreme which you can (easily) accidentally Phase-Push after someone gets charmed, leaving in the end about 4 charmed folk by the time lightning comes around which could lead to a wipe if people aren't ready. Ramuh EX is already so technical for a primal that its almost universally hated, is having to watch HP for phase pushes really a necessity? - No, its not, and it shouldn't be.

If SE can't have the foresight to design a boss that doesn't "Break" and unavoidably wipe everyone due to an accidental phase push, we're f**ked in the long term as our Item level gets higher and higher, and imposing level caps will just end up killing off the old content. Who wants to be synced to a 110 dungeon to help people progress when our Item level is 300+?

I've seen way too many melee DPS that want to throw "one more punch for max DPS!" in before moving away from Thunderspark or get in position to avoid Shiva's icicle circles or move to a bud to get away from Rafflesia.

Unless they're bad enough to actually still get hit, how is this a bad thing? Why does this offend you so? Do you get angry at SCH's who throw out one last Adloqium before tank pulls because "They gotta get that one more cure for protection!" even though it could go off too late and they end up getting hate? No, its their frickin' job and it also happens to be a smart thing to do. If you're doing a 3-step combo on DPS and are on your third hit, especially MNK keeping up Greased Lightning, getting that last hit could be a huge thing and so long as you can get away without getting hit, there's nothing wrong with that... and in fact not doing it would be the stupid thing.

And for what its worth, you can go straight to my lodestone, I play Tank, Healer, and DPS... PLD, SMN, SCH, NIN... I'll pick a role for what I'm needed, and when I'm on that job I'll do that job to my fullest capabilities. I'm not punished as a SCH for keeping the tanks HP topped off and applying Adloqium too well... When on PLD, I have means to control my enmity when needed (Sword Oath over Shield Oath for things like Tank swapping) so I don't even have to hold back when stuff like that comes up, and can prepare ahead of time and swap back to Shield.

So, closing thoughts.I get and believe the mark of a good player is to be aware of these fights which have crappy foresight in mechanics and have KO-Phase pushes, and I think as the game stands now, they should be aware of these and restrain themselves from causing a wipe. Any DPS who pushes these phases and causes a wipe cause they're incapable of understanding it, is a bad player. But I also strongly feel this is straight up poor and bad game design and foresight, and should be addressed. A player should not be punished for truly excelling at their jobs function.

[RiceisNice]

The problem with "Too much dps causes wipes" is that it turns progression or preparation to be detrimental to the group or making the fight harder (which honestly doesn't make that much sense). For example, you're doing more damage as you pick up a piece of gear from clearing XYZ. Now XYZ becomes harder because you get another check on top of what you already have to deal with. Progressive Gear/echo makes the fight harder? Isn't the point of getting better gear and echo supposed to make the fight easier? Fights like Ramen EX and Leviabeetus EX will wipe you if you push it too fast

[Wobi]

I see a trend every fight to work around the intended game mechanics by the devs, once DPS/gear levels are high enough the player base will try and force a one-tank strat, or one healer even to put more DPS in place. So when SE actually put in mechanics that pushing phases too hard could backfire, then you suddenly get this whining. If they didn't program interesting mechanics fights would get boring, sure they can give it more HP but when you have to juggle multiple adds/mechanics/phases it goes from a fight that you just power thru with gear that any scrub could clear to something that it takes actual coordination to complete.

One of the most amazing examples of this is the S-Rank Hunt in Mor Dhona, people do not pay attention to phase shift and when he puts up damage reflectors you get surrounded by the bodies of all the button mashers pushing for MAX DPS and that is just for a silly hunt.

[Reiryuu]

They're not really punishing you for dpsing, they're punishing you for dpsing the wrong target(s) and ignoring mechanics. Scholars have it a little easier than WHMs. I've been punished plenty of times in Coil for regening the tank early when an add's about to pop out. Or starting stoneskin a bit too late and the add jumps on me instead of the tank because stoneskin happens to land right between provoke and shield lob/tomahawk.

[Magis]

I get what you're saying, and honestly its all good advice... so you're right... up until the bolded part, where I must disagree... Though not entirely, as you will see by my final statement below.

If a DPS is being punished for DPSing, its not so much bad game design as it is extremely poor foresight, You are literally being punished for just being exceptional at your job, this is absolutely unacceptably terrible. And What does this spell for SMN? They can't just "Stop" their DoTs when a phase push comes close, and if your advice is to stop applying DoTs at an arbitrary % close to phase shift, you're essentially asking a SMN to be even more useless. If a DPS doing their job, and by doing their job I mean everything you mentioned except the bolded part, and you can manage to "Break" the fight and cause an instant-wipe, its poor game design. I shouldn't have to count to 5 between each of my combo buttons just so the last boss in Haukke doesn't Deus Ex Deathga the group.

Is the DPS having to slow down or stop DPS because they dumped tons of hate and the mob starts attacking them "bad design"? Damage control has been part of MMOs since ever and isn't something new FFXIV brought up. They just added a new form of it, though iirc WoW had a few bosses that had that as well.

The fact you had to worry about hate in the pre-50s (and even some level 50 4 mans) was fun to see again since it meant you had to worry about how fast you casted or what you cast. Not like what WoW turned into, where once the tank has aggro you never have to worry about pulling hate.

[Zfz]

I only know the Haukke HM case where DPS could be so high that when the adds appear, the boss immediately eat the adds.

In this case, I suppose the argument should be to make all bosses invulnerable during phase changes. That means no more unintentional (and intentional) phase advancements. Although many of us would agree that this could make overgeared content quite a bit more boring, as forcing a phase skip (or even just a partial one) sometimes is a really cool thing to achieve.

To defend the current implementation, I must say that knowing when and where to deal your dps is part of the job of being a DPS. Just like a tank's job isn't just to deal the most enmity, but to deal enough enmity so that no DPS are held back, then focus on actual damage, all the while maintaining proper damage avoidance and mitigation.

If we say that the DPS's job is just to deal the highest dps possible, then maybe the Tank's job is just to deal the highest enmity possible, the Healer's job is just to deal the highest hps possible---all irregardless of the situation? But no. We demand good Tanks to know when to switch out of their tanking stance, we demand good Healers to do the stance dance, why are the DPS not required to adjust their play according to what is optimum at the time?

Knowing when to stop and switch targets is part of the job of being a DPS.

[BlaiseArath]

Is the DPS having to slow down or stop DPS because they dumped tons of hate and the mob starts attacking them "bad design"? Damage control has been part of MMOs since ever and isn't something new FFXIV brought up. They just added a new form of it, though iirc WoW had a few bosses that had that as well.

Theres a difference between actual intended mechanics (enmity generation) and unintended mechanics (clearly unintended one-hit KO phase pushes). I trust you can understand such an obvious difference?

Plus, I don't know any time, minus a heinously bad tank, I've come close to losing hate in XIV on any of my jobs. Tanking in this game alone is super easy if you have a brain... but then your argument is about "Bad tank vs good DPS, who should suck less" and frankly I don't want to go there lol. Though I'll admit that since I am not a dev, I cannot prove it was intended for the Final boss in Haukke to one shot you if you played your jobs too well. Though as fair play you could not prove otherwise...

Knowing when to stop and switch targets is part of the job of being a DPS.

What about SMN though :I? you can't switch your DoT's to another target, and if the other DPS are slow at reacting, your DoTs which were safely applied are now the instrument of your death. They have a DoT job, so unless they expect us to just stop casting DoTs and spamming ruin on certain bosses, phase pushing is a problem.

[Myrhn]

Toomuch DPS is not punishing you. Ignoring mechanics in favor of doing more DPS is whats punish you.

[BlaiseArath]

Toomuch DPS is not punishing you. Ignoring mechanics in favor of doing more DPS is whats punish you.

This is true for SOME situations, yes, I'd even say for most situations, we do not deny that... But its not true for all of them, and we're trying to point out the important ones so that maybe, in the future, SE can fix those and avoid similar mistakes.

[RiceisNice]

...

Pulling enmnity/aggro is on a different context than "dealing too much damage", although they can go hand to hand. My examples were referring to Leviathan EX where no matter how fast you kill all the spumes, tidal wave will still wipe you if you don't give the elemental converter enough time to recharge to at least 33 (which is very easy to do in a party of ilvl110). Yes, that can still happen if you straight up ignored the spumes, but it can also occur if you dps levi too quickly even after killing the spumes; not a matter of "knowing when to switch targets to dps". Ramuh could be a sketchy example because you'd still need to kill all the adds anyway before going back onto Ramuh.

WoW bosses for the most part had the formula of "adds need to die before phase transition" or "taking care of all the mechanics", which means knowing what to dps, and up to WoD I haven't really seen an example close to the leviathan one where pushing him too soon regardless of how fast you take care of the prior phase would wipe you.

Gear/echo shouldn't add onto an extra layer of complexity; at that point it turns "gearing up" from clearing that fight making the same fight harder, or making future attempts harder because of stacking echo (esp on Leviathan). To me, that's bad design (and thankfully, Leviathan is the only example of this I can come up with.)