Making Jobs Rotationally Easier in 4.0

[aleph_null]

We can argue all day about whether carrying a few bad players (regardless of role) in normal mode is acceptable or not, but currently it's possible and I don't think it'll change anytime soon, considering the gap between the good players and the average people you find in DF, which leads to what this thread is (supposedly) discussing about: trimming the skill set of jobs and making their rotations simpler.

I believe no one likes having to take on the burden of carrying underperforming players, especially those who refuse to listen to advices to get better, but as of now I think it'd be bad if you tune normal mode raids to something that would be impossible to clear with 1-2 bad players since the success rate of DFing those would plummet significantly. Fyi even in a9s and a10s you can clear while carrying a dead dps as long as the other 7 people are competent, meanwhile my friends who RF these fights every week still see wipes due to enrage or failing dps checks (adds). I don't think tuning a9n-a12n to something of that level would be something SE would do. Personally I have accepted that normal mode raids are places where you can carry a few bad players.

[Sarcatica]

i hope for a good rework of shield/ grit /defiance, to make our TANK MODE made for tank be mandatory on MT, in other words a fair trade off and not a 17%-70%, meaby remove damage penalty and ajust the potency of all skills idk but something, make our tanking skills more usefull that just a simple raw mitigation and situational use, and how know make our tank stance improve our defensives tools.

You can say that only A12S "forces" you to put up tank stance for the tank busters if you want to avoid some buttclenching damage. Aside that, all the tank busters can be tanked without tank stance easily with the condition that you actually know when to use your CDs optimally. However you do need to discount that it's only something to attempt if you are completely sure about it. So not just anyone can replicate the aggressive tanking.

[whiskeybravo]

However you do need to discount that it's only something to attempt if you are completely sure about it. So not just anyone can replicate the aggressive tanking.

That's really my only gripe on the whole argument. It's fine for veteran players who know what they are doing, my problem is the emphasis that seems to be placed on "if you aren't doing this then you're doing it wrong" which can be misleading to newer players, or cause unnecessary frustration for progression groups. I mean, would you rather spend 10 hours more on progression while your tank figures it out his cd rotation so he can drop stances or is it better to clear the content several times before you start pushing yourself and the rest of the team? It just seems to be an overlooked gray area by both sides of the argument.

[Reynhart]

I think the issue with Alex Normal not teaching people how to raid is less to do with the fact that it's not punishing enough, so much as the fact that there isn't enough content to spread the difficulty curve though.

But unless they create more content (Which they kind of hinted to at Fanfest, and that would probably displease hardcore raiders...), it means building the learning curve throughout dungeons and primals.

All of Alexander (Gordias, Midas, Creator) needs to be clearable by anyone on the 'Normal Level'.

There's "anyone" and "anyone". The less you'll ask to your players, the less they'll do and the less they'll try harder content...requiring a slight effort is not inconceivable.

That design choice makes sense because of how few people actually Raid

But being able to clear Alex Normal with almost no effort doesn't prepare you to go into Savage.

Sophia is probably the best primal to learn as a tank right now, to be honest. Regular tank busters, tank swaps that are punishing but possible to live through, with a fairly minimal HP floor to survive with minimal mitigation.

Yes, Sophia EX is fun, with a bit of RNG, even though the RNG is mostly dependent of what you skip.

[Ultimatecalibur]

I am going to pull logs for tank stance vs DPS stance comparison.

A9S
3:57 https://www.fflogs.com/reports/YG2Pr...e=damage-taken
5:51 https://www.fflogs.com/reports/DJn9h...e=damage-taken

Actually your examples are really bad and your statistical analysis is incredibly faulty.

First off the Grit parse is from October 4th and the no-Grit parse is from November 2nd. That is plenty of time to go from i255 to i260+ accounting a potion of the roughly 22% to 40% increase in DpS that everyone else experienced as well as part of the damage taken decrease. The no-Grit parse's dps is also inflated by an Astrologian using Balance.

Second the Grit Parse ends shortly after a huge damage spike (likely a soaked Double Scrapline) which inflated the DTPS total.

Your comparison is non-comparable for anything but the difference in 5 weeks of gearing up, fight familiarity and use of an Astrologian over a White Mage.

P.S. Looking at things a bit more it looks like you gained about a 40% increase in damage from gear, fight familiarity and Astro buffs which would put the change closer to 20% for 20%.

[Reynhart]

P.S. Looking at things a bit more it looks like you gained about a 40% increase in damage from gear, fight familiarity and Astro buffs which would put the change closer to 20% for 20%.

Actually considering that Grit only reduces damage by 20% and that Darkside is available whatever you do, 70% difference between Grit and non-Grit seems really really high.
Sure, you have Blood Weapon to Dark Arts more, but still...

[Ultimatecalibur]

Actually considering that Grit only reduces damage by 20% and that Darkside is available whatever you do, 70% difference between Grit and non-Grit seems really really high.
Sure, you have Blood Weapon to Dark Arts more, but still...

Reread what I said: Most of that 70% increase in dps is from 5 weeks of gear and an Astrologian feeding Balances to the party rather than the increase being from the difference between not being in Grit and being in Grit.

To keep it simple no Grit to Grit is 20% less damage taken for ~20% less damage dealt.
The reverse Grit to no Grit is 25% more damage taken for ~25% more damage dealt.

A 36% increase in damage from better gear and Balance buffs combined with a 25% increase in damage from going from Grit to no-Grit is a total increase of 70%. (1.36*1.25=1.7)

[Reynhart]

Reread what I said: Most of that 70% increase in dps is from 5 weeks of gear and an Astrologian feeding Balances to the party rather than the increase being from the difference between not being in Grit and being in Grit.

I have read what you said and I agree with you. 70% increase can't be the result of proper stance dancing alone.

What could be interesting is doing two runs with the same team, one where the tank stays in tank stance, and one where he stance dances. We'll see how much damage he takes, how much DPS he does, and how much DPS the healer loses as a tradeoff.

[Shurrikhan]

P.S. Looking at things a bit more it looks like you gained about a 40% increase in damage from gear, fight familiarity and Astro buffs which would put the change closer to 20% for 20%.

As long as the raid dps is increasing as a result though—e.g. if that extra 20% healing needed resulted in less than a 20% decrease in healer dps, or where delayed heals could cause lost dps due to hesitation among the wounded DPS—that 20% for 20% isn't necessarily an even trade. Alternatively, if the tank were already maximizing the healer's toolkit in the form of HoTs and abilities when primarily in Grit, the move to stance-dancing could theoretically cost more than 20% depending on the timing. Which would make the decision not necessarily a "choice" (if anything ever is, anyways?), but certainly context-dependent (which to me sounds about perfect).

What remains after that point may not be a matter for rebalancing stance payoff, but rather of rebalancing healer output slightly.
Or of course, adjusting how that damage is dealt, as to reward tank-healer skill at least as well as before while making the tank stance slightly more lucrative.

Reread what I said: Most of that 70% increase in dps is from 5 weeks of gear and an Astrologian feeding Balances to the party rather than the increase being from the difference between not being in Grit and being in Grit.

To keep it simple no Grit to Grit is 20% less damage taken for ~20% less damage dealt.
The reverse Grit to no Grit is 25% more damage taken for ~25% more damage dealt.

That said, were one to have dropped Grit the entire fight, the difference would be larger than just the removal of the damage penalty. You would need to also account for Blood Weapon's mana generation (associated spenders) and slightly increased attack speed, (higher hpm and associated rotational/speed plateaus during and sync thereafter), which would have a further, if small, positive effect.

[Sarcatica]

Actually your examples are really bad and your statistical analysis is incredibly faulty.

First off the Grit parse is from October 4th and the no-Grit parse is from November 2nd. That is plenty of time to go from i255 to i260+ accounting a potion of the roughly 22% to 40% increase in DpS that everyone else experienced as well as part of the damage taken decrease. The no-Grit parse's dps is also inflated by an Astrologian using Balance.

Second the Grit Parse ends shortly after a huge damage spike (likely a soaked Double Scrapline) which inflated the DTPS total.

Your comparison is non-comparable for anything but the difference in 5 weeks of gearing up, fight familiarity and use of an Astrologian over a White Mage.

P.S. Looking at things a bit more it looks like you gained about a 40% increase in damage from gear, fight familiarity and Astro buffs which would put the change closer to 20% for 20%.

I am pointing this out because primarily this is what most of the team deal with, comparing to the better parse ofc. Double Scrapline is not meant to be soaked, has nothing to do with DTPS. You can't bunch fight familiarity with Astro buffs because that's part of the fight and not because you decide to bring AST that your execution becomes great.

I agree that this comparison is flawed by its nature due to the gear upgrades and growth as a team, I do not have the sufficient data to actually compare parses with me being the only variance, because I do need to parse more runs to get a reliable comparison (and my team probably isn't keen to keep running the same fight just because I want to gather data). However a point was brought to the table that optimized runs is basically on how skilled you are AND how good is your team to plan out the fights as a group, even to the smallest things like movements, defensive CDs run down to the healers, etc.