Did the game get too complicated, or am I just an idiot?

[spelley]

This sounds all fine and good, until you get hit by unavoidable damage that interrupts your cast and you lose all your stuff.

I think part of what he is saying, and that I agree with, is sometimes this will happen and that is okay. Sometimes you get RNG'd at a bad time, and lose your damage buff and are sad for a few seconds. You adjust and move on. Honestly, most of the "random" AoEs that can happen during dungeon boss fights come out at a specific time/pattern which you can plan around by "loosening" your rotation up during that phase, by throwing 1 less Fire 4 or not throwing out that Geirskogul when you know that Quarantine is about to go off and could choose you.

And in Savage content, it seems like (From what I'm hearing) *nothing* is random for the most part, so you can work around everything anyway.

[Craiger]

DPS in a dungeon shouldn't matter. Especially lower level ones...

If you use a parser (which is needed for Raids, and you can use it to try and improve/beat records in other content too), you'll see a wide variety of players in dungeons. Some have painfully low DPS, but does that mean I, or anyone else, is going to kick them? No. It's a dungeon after all.

You seem to know your rotation too, so I doubt you're doing worse DPS than the majority of players I get in dungeons.

Try to look past it, because that's not how most of us have experienced groups to be. You must have been very unlucky.

[Ayuhra]

Heavensward has been an odd beast for me. I have a love/hate relationship with it.

The world, story, atmosphere, characters, music and encounters are all great but the classes don't play as well for me anymore. Classes could have cumbersome rotations in 2.0 but now there are just enough new abilities that most of them have too much. For me Heavensward PLAYS worse than Realm Reborn. And I am a BLM, we arguable took one of the lesser face-fulls of new abilities. We're just...more immobile than ever. And a bit more clunky.

[Fendred]

It's Heavensward. They made the damage dealing too complicated. We've had people complaining about the DD over in the general chat for several weeks. The DD jobs need an overhaul.

[Ryaz]

But that is the core fundamentals of having of mechanics; to challenge your ability to pull off your rotation optimally in the face of a boss whose goal is to screw with your rotation. Amongst other things.

Sometimes you get shafted, sometimes you don't, but almost always there is something else you could've done.

Like sitting on your Wildfire until you see someone get Quarantined (within reason). For example, I know the first Quaruntine is coming around 50% on the first leg, I'm safe to go ham. My second round I know there might be a conflict because depending on group DPS, the leg might shatter before the second. I need to analyze what it happening and make a decision, not just jam buttons as they light up. This is an example of how mechanics separate the 'good' from the 'great'.

You're right though, some classes cop it harder than others on certain fights; that's the nature of the game however and part of what keeps it interesting - in my view. If your class is super reliant on those CDs (which MCH is) that means you need to be that more in-tune with mechanics that can screw with that phase. It's annoying no doubt, but necessary if you want to give it your best!

Naturally, these words are easy to say. Much harder to put into practice however.

The only real fight where I've actually had an issue so far is A4. A1, I can pop my buffs first thing and I'll sit on Wildfires until after the bots land again. A2... Well, not really as much use for it there as most mobs die before it goes off. A3 is fairly simple to manage it as there's plenty of time each phase. It's mostly A4 phase 2 that gets me. After the first leg is shattered, I save my Wildfire for the beginning of the second, which usually goes off fine. It's when I'm dealing with dolls, lasers and Quarantine at the same time that it gets messy. Which I'm sure it does for other classes.

I usually am near top dps on Alex fights, so I've gotten down pretty well, imo. It just sucks getting punished so hard for unavoidable mechanics. I'm not sure how hard it is for other classes to reapply their big buffs like BotD or Enochian, but having to rely on multiple 90+ second cooldowns and a 15 second window just to be competitive is really annoying and can be hard to recover from if something does screw up. Especially when several of the cooldowns don't even line up well, like Reload and Hypercharge, and you're left relying on RNG procs to just not lose your dps too much. That's not about skill, it's about luck, which always a bad design choice, in my mind.

[Adventica6]

For "some" classes they made the damage dealing more complicated for the sake of complexity and nothing else, this is true with Blm. You have timers, buffs, spells, cds, Thunderclouds, all types of things to worry about constantly, Umbral and astral + more. If any one of those things messes up even for a second say good bye to your dps.

Not saying blm is a bad class, it does some nice dmg forsure, but the long road you must travel on to reach the said dmg is way too long, so many things can go wrong, you could be knocked away on a blizzard cast you needed, you could mess up enochian by 1 second, so many things to list. And this is why my blm sits at lvl 50.

[seraseth]

Heavensward has been an odd beast for me. I have a love/hate relationship with it.
The world, story, atmosphere, characters, music and encounters are all great but the classes don't play as well for me anymore.

Same. I absolutely loved the story, I tore through it in no time, not because I was rushing to 60, but because I was enjoying it so much I didn't want to stop. The theme, the characters and oh man, the music was fantastic (except for library, the music was fine, but so didn't fit the feel of the place, was extremely jarring).

But I'm hating most of the class changes. I used to main blm, and actually quit playing it, because it's simply not fun anymore. Then I pushed several other jobs to 60 (painful grinding because I was trying to do it fast so that I could rejoin my friends playing together) trying to find one I could actually stand playing. I finally settled on brd, not because I love playing it, but because of what I tried, it was the most tolerable. I still constantly feel like I'm playing an alt though, because I only like it, not love it.

[Bishop81]

Yes they made it more complicated for the sake of making it complicated.

That sounds about right.

So many things to juggle and track now that playing is actually kind of tiring.

Can't say it's all that entertaining though.

[Cynfael]

And this is why my blm sits at lvl 50.

On the other hand, you can't fairly comment on the experience of playing BLM at 60 without trying it yourself. While it's fine for people to have an opinion on BLM mechanics, some people who really dislike Enochian exaggerate its downsides pretty badly, so don't take it all on faith.

If you're unfamiliar with a fight or know that rotation-halting mechanics might happen to you, you adjust to refresh AF and Eno a little earlier to be in the safe side; if you're confident that you can turret, go balls to the wall and squeeze out all your F4s etc., then refresh Enochian as late as you like. Surprised by something? Swiftcast can save your rotation.

TL;DR: Try it and see what your own experience is like. Personally I don't find it bad now that I'm used to it.

[VorpalSpork]

I'm in the agree on too complicated crowd. I see this issue as totally subjective, because some players I think like the complexity.
Personally, I'd rather be watching the boss, enjoying the fight and concentrating on mechanics, not watching for multiple timers and buff durations, worrying about positionals, etc. I like the story of the game, but Heavensward just made the combat feel clunky and less fun.