Savage Alexander and the Paladin Exodus

[StouterTaru]

Imo this is just a symptom that basically all endgame content right now is designed as hard enrage dps checks - which is an entire problem in itself.

The alternative is a system where the meta becomes a party made entirely of tanks, healers, and one bard for any high end content.

[Donjo]

I don't think that hard enrage DPS checks are problematic personally.

I'm not quite sure about that. They have their places, but the primary proponent of the problem people are currently seeing with Paladins(low DPS) is almost directly caused by the fact that every enrage in Savage Alexander is hard. There's no compromise. Making more enrages soft(but not every enrage), on the other hand, could encourage more varying party compositions clearing fights.

I'll take Savage 3 as an example. Let's imagine a situation where the enrage is softer than it was. Instead of a big daddy Cascade coming to destroy you eventually because "lol you took too long", the last phase rotation will repeat endlessly with the caveat that Cascade will do increasingly more damage to the party every time it pops up. Most parties would, say, get wrecked eventually around when the hard enrage currently is. However, if you bring along a Paladin, Warrior, Monk, Astro, and Scholar you could stack mitigation, get past one or two more Cascades, and lengthen the fight. A party could also take those silly melded accessories and stack some extra VIT to get past later Cascades with less damage reduction. The point is if they don't have the DPS for a straight burn then they can opt to play it safe, lengthen the fight, and lessen the DPS check. This kind of fight design could give both Dark Knight and Paladin different reasons to be in the party.

By the way: Does the damage reduction from Sacred Soil stack with Collective Unconscious, or are they mutually exclusive?

The alternative is a system where the meta becomes a party made entirely of tanks, healers, and one bard for any high end content.

This is precisely why the traditional Holy Trinity features Tanks and Healers that do peanuts for damage.

[Zumi]

World firsts and second guilds are trying to beat the fight undergeared. This will be a non issue in 1 or 2 months when the majorty of average FCs beat it. I am not in a world first FC wouldn't switch from Pld to a job I have no esoterics gear on.

[Lyone]

World firsts and second guilds are trying to beat the fight undergeared. This will be a non issue in 1 or 2 months when the majorty of average FCs beat it. I am not in a world first FC wouldn't switch from Pld to a job I have no esoterics gear on.

The problem is that right now he could switch to DRK with 0 esoterics gear and do even better than his pld in every way. This is the core of the issue.

[Quintalian]

Hey, I don't have anything to add to this conversation. I didn't read any of these posts because hardcore raiding discussion makes my eyes glaze over.

I just wanted to say that out of context, this thread subject sounds like the title of an entry in a series of young adult novels, and I found that way more entertaining than whatever's going on in here.

[ckc22]

The alternative is a system where the meta becomes a party made entirely of tanks, healers, and one bard for any high end content.

There are plenty of fights with interesting mechanics that have a dps check at some point in the fight or a soft enrage.

[Croisciento]

Snip

That's what they did previously with every coil. Mostly soft enrages and apart from T13 if you group was playing properly you wouldn't have problems with DPS. I mean you wouldn't really pressure healers nor tanks to dps that hard. Tank DPS really became a thing with Alexander savage.

But the problem is that no matter which kind of mechanic you'll throw to players they'll beat it eventually and it won't take them weeks or even months. So they decided to prevent most players from clearing with gear. That's kind of stupid in my opinion but that's how you keep players on content...

And to the guy saying its because we are fighting undergeared we were also fighting undergeared back then on T9/T13 and there wasn't a particular class who wouldn't be able to clear except Dragoon which got fixed few weeks later.

Oh and warrior being mandatory not only because of its dps but also its utility is also a sign there's a problem.

[Donjo]

That's what they did previously with every coil. Mostly soft enrages and apart from T13 if you group was playing properly you wouldn't have problems with DPS. I mean you wouldn't really pressure healers nor tanks to dps that hard. Tank DPS really became a thing with Alexander savage.

That's not quite true. The First Coil remains as the best designed raid tier in the history of the game in terms of its ability to challenge a Tank's ability to mitigate, a Healer's ability to heal, and a DPS's ability to DPS, all at the same time. Second Coil was a mechanics check more than anything else, but T8 and T9 had threatening DPS checks that many groups were able to sidestep by removing a Tank from the party. Final Coil shut down single tanking in raids and gave every fight threatening enrages. Building Tanks for damage first started gaining momentum during Second Coil, but it was Final Coil where it truly became a thing. This was due to the combination of crafted gear being more powerful than it had ever, hideously low Tank HP thresholds for the raid, and a desire to make that "other tank" be more useful when they aren't in front of the boss.

For Savage Alexander, crafted gear was knocked down a peg(although accessories weren't knocked down as much as the left side), the Tank HP thresholds are still hideously low, and every fight again has a threatening enrage. This is just following Final Coil's lead.

[tymora]

Short of making all jobs completely homogeneous, some content will always favor a job or another. As a matter of fact, I think it is not favoring enough (i.e. no weapon/magic resistances)
My opinion on things:
The good tank is one that masters his job. The best tank is one that has mastered all of them and can switch between one and the other.

Same for DPS, same for healer. Hence the armory system. The best players are able to and will pick the best job for the best situation. Any less, well you are just average.

If I have any grief with the game, its that the design direction is now sitting on the fence. They can't decide if they want to make it completely accessible or to make full use of the armory system.

On the bright side, unlike other games, you can simply level a job to max, instead of creating a new character and do everything all over again.

[Fendred]

Imo this is just a symptom that basically all endgame content right now is designed as hard enrage dps checks - which is an entire problem in itself.

It's not so much the DPS checks as much as the ability bloat, which was cool to start with, but became a hindrance during raids where more attention needs to be placed on the battlefield than the ability bar. Plus, I still ended up getting bored after a while because, for DD at least, we use the same abilities for every encounter, minus a few AoE skills.