FFXIV is in a Prime Position to Make Some Drastic Changes

[RiceisNice]

And given that, I'll never understand why 'you don't HAVE to use the mathematically best build unless you're a top raider' is an argument...

I might just be an outlier, but I played marksman hunter fairly frequently in WoW, even though Beastmaster and Survival are still better (though they're all competitive, really). Sorta like now how BRD is essentially better for most of the circumstances in raiding due to foe and RoD lowering the healer's miss rates, but I still play MCH over them because I like having my wildfire burst. The two functionally fufil the same role but do so somewhat differently. It just becomes a problem when you let that become the limiting factor to really add anything else to the game (such as new jobs or horizontal skill progression), and it makes for a very flat viewpoint for all of the players. People already exclude people for the silliest of reasons (such as excluding MCH/BRD during 3.0), and nothing's going to change that.

Just to rebute, the ultimate goal for the player in a game should be to have fun. Some find it fun to be competitive an shoot for the best, others find it fun to mess around with different gimmicks without being a total burden to the party.

[Krylo]

I might just be an outlier, but I played marksman hunter fairly frequently in WoW, even though Beastmaster and Survival are still better

It's funny you use WoW as an example, because Blizzard agrees with me so hard (and so does EA/Bioware), that those builds don't even exist anymore. They realized most of the talents were pointless, in a given tree, either because everyone took them, or no one did and so the trees are gone. They have been uprooted and sent to the toothpick factory.

That said, while I don't remember hunter very well as it was a long time ago, I remember most classes had very very different feels depending on your main tree--and often fulfilled completely different party rolls (like shadow priests being DPS). So picking a marksman hunter was basically like playing a different, but related, class, compared to Beastmaster/Survival. And that's completely understandable.

However, I have to ask, did you pick your talents in the marksman tree based on which would be most effective?

Because, okay

Just to rebute, the ultimate goal for the player in a game should be to have fun. Some find it fun to be competitive an shoot for the best, others find it fun to mess around with different gimmicks without being a total burden to the party.

I understand this. I really do. Better than most, probably, as whenever I play a tabletop RPG I tend to gravitate toward this kind of play style. For me making something that shouldn't work, work, is a lot of fun--and it puts a strong damper on my power gaming ways so that I don't ruin anyone else's fun. But, the thing is, it's still about being as good as I can be within a constraint, regardless of what that constraint is.

And even in those situations a lot of the 'choices' laid out for you are meaningless.

The only time when you can have meaningful choices is when they create large but roughly balanced changes to core gameplay. I.E. when it's about the equivalent of having a different class. But then, within that class, you still end up with most people looking almost exactly the same--whether they got there through experimentation on their own, or went and looked up a guide written by someone who did.

You probably didn't look much different than other marksman hunters.

And even then, if the numbers don't line up close enough, you end up with a massive dearth of certain classes. Shoulda seen SWtOR at release if you wanted a good example of this. There were lots of classes that no one was playing at all because they were terrible. The smuggler forums were a ghost town. You could learn everyone's forum account by name. I still played smuggler because no other class allowed me to kick sithlords in the dingle berries, but due to the fact that the scoundrel subclass was over-nerfed due to having burst that was too high for fair PvP play, and gunslingers just never being that good until months and months later (and smugglers having animation issues that made them inferior to imperial agents), there was basically no one there. Last time I checked in, it was the marauder/sentinel forums that were mostly empty other than people complaining about how dead their class was. EA/Bioware are absolutely awful at class balance, by the way. Just throwing that out there.

Also, for the record, when I played a WoW hunter last (aaaaaages ago, around the release of BC I think? Maybe?), a Marksman/survival hybrid was best if I remember right.

[Shyle]

They realized most of the talents were pointless, in a given tree, either because everyone took them, or no one did and so the trees are gone. They have been uprooted and sent to the toothpick factory..

Actually they streamlined the old talent trees into what the first iteration of the new skill system is because each expansion was creating a mess of the talents and trying to balance them was near impossible. Skill bloat and meaningless talents was another reason why they changed how talents and skills are done in WoW.The old skill trees in WoW, actually did lend to some pretty cool builds, the hybrid builds for DK that actually topped the charts due to how the skills and talents synergized. Other builds also came about with those trees, but in the end, having 50+ talent points to manage in multiple builds became more of a chore. So they changed how skills/talents are done to a far far far more simplistic and open option.

Right now, in ffxiv we're starting to see a lot of skill bloat, the next expansion better have some skill/ability revisions, otherwise it's just going to be a mess.

[RiceisNice]

That said, while I don't remember hunter very well as it was a long time ago, I remember most classes had very very different feels depending on your main tree--and often fulfilled completely different party rolls (like shadow priests being DPS). So picking a marksman hunter was basically like playing a different, but related, class, compared to Beastmaster/Survival. And that's completely understandable.

However, I have to ask, did you pick your talents in the marksman tree based on which would be most effective?

My point was in regards to picking the specialization and the talents in general (which means I'm referring to playing a hunter post-cataclysm expansion, where they had already done away with the old talent trees). Even I agree that something like their pre-catacylsm talent trees were a bit outdated, because everyone always went for the same build. However, you still had some horizontal character progression and choices in the form of specializations (cataclysm and onward), and somewhat more limited in the talents themselves (which have undergone tremendous change) and glyph.

Had I played a hunter during WoD release, I would have taken something like exotic munitions to add as secondary effect to my ranged auto attacks. On the other hand, I believe that lone wolf was a better dps increase for marksman hunter, since EA didn't benefit from their mastery.

Also, for the record, when I played a WoW hunter last (aaaaaages ago, around the release of BC I think? Maybe?), a Marksman/survival hybrid was best if I remember right.

Like right here, we probably have two completely different perspectives. As I mentioned above, I was playing a marksman hunter during MoP, at that point they had done away with talent trees and specializations were more-or-less a "job route" for each class. Marksman has always been behind BM and SV as far as dps was concerned, but I still prefered using physical shots as my source of damage. Not enough of a difference to prevent htem from being able to clear the top tier content, mind you, just comparatively lower.

They've done away with a lot of fluff and pointless numbers (like 0/5 rank talents that give % damage increase), but still give some resembelence of horizontal progression. Sure there's going to be some that's better for the extra 2-5% dps, but I could always mess around with my talent points if I wanted to change my pacing for a dungeon, raid or dailies. I can't necessarily say that I have the same luxury on FFXIV when it comes to raiding due to gear being job specific...and the fact that my role is the "support dps" of MCH/BRD, the two having gameplay that's been homogenized as hell.

[Shurrikhan]

My point was in regards to picking the specialization and the talents in general (which means I'm referring to playing a hunter post-cataclysm expansion, where they had already done away with the old talent trees). Even I agree that something like their pre-catacylsm talent trees were a bit outdated, because everyone always went for the same build. However, you still had some horizontal character progression and choices in the form of specializations (cataclysm and onward), and somewhat more limited in the talents themselves (which have undergone tremendous change) and glyph.

Had I played a hunter during WoD release, I would have taken something like exotic munitions to add as secondary effect to my ranged auto attacks. On the other hand, I believe that lone wolf was a better dps increase for marksman hunter, since EA didn't benefit from their mastery.


Like right here, we probably have two completely different perspectives. As I mentioned above, I was playing a marksman hunter during MoP, at that point they had done away with talent trees and specializations were more-or-less a "job route" for each class. Marksman has always been behind BM and SV as far as dps was concerned, but I still prefered using physical shots as my source of damage. Not enough of a difference to prevent them from being able to clear the top tier content, mind you, just comparatively lower.

They've done away with a lot of fluff and pointless numbers (like 0/5 rank talents that give % damage increase), but still give some resembelence of horizontal progression. Sure there's going to be some that's better for the extra 2-5% dps, but I could always mess around with my talent points if I wanted to change my pacing for a dungeon, raid or dailies. I can't necessarily say that I have the same luxury on FFXIV when it comes to raiding due to gear being job specific...and the fact that my role is the "support dps" of MCH/BRD, the two having gameplay that's been homogenized as hell.

[Iirc, Focusing Shot had the best general dps, but Lone Wolf had the best 80-100% and Kill Shot % dps, especially with guaranteed Aimed Shot crits at the opening phase, often averaging out to greater gains if pure single-target. Easily within 2% in single-target unless movement killed Focusing Shots' usefulness, but potentially much larger bonuses from Focusing Shot if AoEing frequently. Munitions tended to lag behind each unless somehow (usually just in 5-mans), you could cover most of your AoE needs just though the Incendiary/Explosive ammo's AoE component while STing...

Moreover, the talent choices now are even more cookie-cutter in that they each have a near-direct relationship with certain fights or styles thereof and can be individually mixed and matched to the situation ("input"), where before the focus was on the class itself and its rotational dynamics (essentially "output"). If two talents now could perform equally well, there's all the more chance that two similar talent builds (whether Wrath or Cata) could have been even more equal in value, and allowed finer nuances. The change to the current was purely a decision made for development cost. (Even if you disregard said talent nuance / identity, the largest change is that we now carry stacks of 99 tomes so that we can swap our talents out for every fight as needed. Boss talents > Trash talents > Boss (2) talents > etc.])

On topic though: what I liked about those kind of choices was their gameplay differentiation, but at the same time, even talents as 'changing' as the Mists/WoD/Legion ones can go wrong, or provide little/few increased identity, options, or general entertainment. Moreover, at least in my opinion, the job would often be better done by something more subtle, such as the Wrath/Cata talents, that don't simply swap out a major button (e.g. Steady > Focusing, Eviscerate > DFA, TV > FV) but also affect those finer rotational priorities, and more importantly one's breadth of capability. More than the talents themselves, even, that's what I feel was gradually sapped out of WoW -- the versatility, the breadth, of the classes. Had we more dynamically usable abilities, or at least no button space wasted by duplicates like Inner Beast / Fell Cleave, or Whirling Thrust / Fang and Claw, or by abilities than do nothing more than buff a certain other ability (Power Surge), our sheer action count in XIV would practically guarantee that breadth. Not saying it has to, it just feels weird that we have this many actions, yet so few in-combat rotational builds available to us -- the number of options that we have regardless of spec. [Queue popped; will fix this rant later.]