Making Jobs Rotationally Easier in 4.0

[Reynhart]

Then why would you ever bring the other two tanks? Either the solo-tank method results in easier clears and higher DPS or the double tanks do and the other becomes entirely irrelevant.

Ok, then, let's take numbers...I'll use your previous max numbers, so 1100 for turtles, 1700 for DPS-tank and 2300 for each DPS. Turtle+DPS-tank+4DPS = 12000 DPS.

Now, let's suppose you bring one uber-turtle who can only deal 500 DPS as a trade off, and 5 DPS. You'll have 500+5*2300 =..... 12000 DPS.

So, which one is better ?

So basically, like I said, to imply that solo-tanking should be a thing is also to say that you want SE to take a huge step back in terms of their raid mechanic creativity and design.

They already said that one person screwing won't doomed the whole party anymore, so you probably won't see lots of mechanics you had in Gordias and Midas Savage. As for G.A, it you could hide behind something to greatly reduce damage or just split, it wouldn't be a "less creative" mechanic.

[Brian_]

looks so funny you say that, when alexander was a huge step back compared to coil in fight desing and party mechanic all locked with just dps checks and party dances like they say for me thats akward.

I think the consensus amongst actual raiders is that Alexander has generally been a huge step forward in terms of actual raid design and polish but a massive step backwards in terms of its reward structure, aesthetics, story / lore, music, and general emotional relevancy. Fights like A3S, A6S, A8S have quite easily been some of SE's best fights and introduced a lot of new and different mechanics. Unfortunately, we've progressed as players enough that we might not realize it, but if you sent the current raiding population back in time to do Coil again, it'd be a complete and total joke in terms of mechanics and difficulty and feel incredibly basic.

And I don't know why you assume PLD is the turtle tank when they were the highest DPS tank and still had the capacity to push good DPS while solo-tanking. Again, you only quantify them as such because we were worse players back then.

Ok, then, let's take numbers...I'll use your previous max numbers, so 1100 for turtles, 1700 for DPS-tank and 2300 for each DPS. Turtle+DPS-tank+4DPS = 12000 DPS.

Now, let's suppose you bring one uber-turtle who can only deal 500 DPS as a trade off, and 5 DPS. You'll have 500+5*2300 =..... 12000 DPS.

So, which one is better ?

Assuming your "uber tank" has enough combined raid mitigation to make up for the loss of stacking DV / Path / Reprisal, easily the 5 DPS.

But again, that's missing the point. What matters is my main point which you always seem to forget.

Balance.

Like I said, you cannot make an intellectually honest argument. Your argument is based around ignoring everything we know about the game and comically rudimentary math. We know SE already has difficulties balancing the existing jobs, skills, and comps. We know the player-base will try to push for optimization even if it's only marginally better. You are opening the pandora's box of imbalance.

How do you think SE is going to deal with balancing stacked physical DPS comps like DRG / MNK / NIN / MCH / BRD? Or DRG vs. NIN vs. MNK when DRG's piercing debuff is much more likely to actually buff the DPS of both a MCH and BRD? Or Foes vs. Hypercharge when you suddenly have 5 physical DPS or 2 casters? Or the ability to have your ranged support both buff party damage AND restore MP on the fly? You're throwing SE into an uncharted wilderness of balance issues and expecting they'll find their way out with their broken compass.

And before you try and type out your usual misinformed and completely ignorant explanation for how SE can deal with all that, consider that all of that redesigning and rebalancing is taking away from the limited man power SE has to develop more content for a player-base with an overwhelming majority that doesn't care about your vision of what a tank should be.

They already said that one person screwing won't doomed the whole party anymore, so you probably won't see lots of mechanics you had in Gordias and Midas Savage. As for G.A, it you could hide behind something to greatly reduce damage or just split, it wouldn't be a "less creative" mechanic.

Spoken like someone who doesn't raid. 1 person making 1 mistake will still straight-up wipe you even in the Creator. It'll likely continue to be that way if this is SE's idea of what an easy raid is.

But again, you miss the point. I wasn't talking about punishing mechanics. I was talking about mechanics that are composition based and dependent on you having 2 tanks, 2 healers, and 4 DPS. What happens to all the current mechanics that mandates you have 2 tanks or has debuff prioritization based on assuming you have a 2/2/4 comp? Stuff like Digititus, Liquid Gaol, Quarantine, Jails, Gavel, GA, Time-gates, Void of Repentance, etc.

Yea, they could rebalance all those mechanics so that they can also work with 2/1/5, 1/2/5, 1/1/6 comps in early prog but that only leads to the homogenization and simplification of mechanics. Mechanics that were tuned to only be for tanks / healers now have to dumbed down so that DPS can also handle it. Damage intake from adds / tank swaps has to be scaled down or redesigned so that it can be solo-tanked through the typical massive vulnerability or damage boosts SE uses to force add splits or tank swaps. Again, you are just limiting SE's options in terms of mechanical design to fulfill your delusion about what tanks should be.

[Reynhart]

Assuming your "uber tank" has enough combined raid mitigation to make up for the loss of stacking DV / Path / Reprisal, easily the 5 DPS.

Normally, he would have enough to stack two of them, since you can't have those three at the same time.

Balance.

No, I'm not missing the part about Balance. You're just using that word without explaining what it is and why it should break upon that. Please tell me what "balance" is, for you ?

I was just hallucinating when my own static burst out in cheers after our A3S clear and after clearing A8S... and after clearing A12S.

Well, for Elysium, it wasn't as much "Cheers !" as "At last, we're done with it, never again"

Content with the difficulty of A1S-A8S forced a lot of groups and players to make hard decisions that fractured the raiding population. The content was so hard that you really couldn't clear it without 8 good players with the same motivation.

It wasn't a "difficulty" issue but a "design" issue...and an incentive issue. But, hey, you think Alex is a step forward, so I guess it's okay...

[Sarcatica]

No, I'm not missing the part about Balance. You're just using that word without explaining what it is and why it should break upon that. Please tell me what "balance" is, for you ?

Brian_ mentioned that. Either you were too blind or just simply didn't want to acknowledge it.

Balance.

Like I said, you cannot make an intellectually honest argument. Your argument is based around ignoring everything we know about the game and comically rudimentary math. We know SE already has difficulties balancing the existing jobs, skills, and comps. We know the player-base will try to push for optimization even if it's only marginally better. You are opening the pandora's box of imbalance.

How do you think SE is going to deal with balancing stacked physical DPS comps like DRG / MNK / NIN / MCH / BRD? Or DRG vs. NIN vs. MNK when DRG's piercing debuff is much more likely to actually buff the DPS of both a MCH and BRD? Or Foes vs. Hypercharge when you suddenly have 5 physical DPS or 2 casters? Or the ability to have your ranged support both buff party damage AND restore MP on the fly? You're throwing SE into an uncharted wilderness of balance issues and expecting they'll find their way out with their broken compass.

And before you try and type out your usual misinformed and completely ignorant explanation for how SE can deal with all that, consider that all of that redesigning and rebalancing is taking away from the limited man power SE has to develop more content for a player-base with an overwhelming majority that doesn't care about your vision of what a tank should be.



Spoken like someone who doesn't raid. 1 person making 1 mistake will still straight-up wipe you even in the Creator. It'll likely continue to be that way if this is SE's idea of what an easy raid is.

But again, you miss the point. I wasn't talking about punishing mechanics. I was talking about mechanics that are composition based and dependent on you having 2 tanks, 2 healers, and 4 DPS. What happens to all the current mechanics that mandates you have 2 tanks or has debuff prioritization based on assuming you have a 2/2/4 comp? Stuff like Digititus, Liquid Gaol, Quarantine, Jails, Gavel, GA, Time-gates, Void of Repentance, etc.

Yea, they could rebalance all those mechanics so that they can also work with 2/1/5, 1/2/5, 1/1/6 comps in early prog but that only leads to the homogenization and simplification of mechanics. Mechanics that were tuned to only be for tanks / healers now have to dumbed down so that DPS can also handle it. Damage intake from adds / tank swaps has to be scaled down or redesigned so that it can be solo-tanked through the typical massive vulnerability or damage boosts SE uses to force add splits or tank swaps. Again, you are just limiting SE's options in terms of mechanical design to fulfill your delusion about what tanks should be.

[Reynhart]

Brian_ mentioned that. Either you were too blind or just simply didn't want to acknowledge it.

Yes, he made a great speech about what he thinks could be a problem. The thing is, in the end it wouldn't change much. He makes it sound real important that you "suddenly have 5 DPS"...when in fact, it's just one DPS and one tank that you have to balance against a tank duo. As for piercing debuff or hypercharge...you can already have DRG+BRD+MCH or MCH/BRD+BLM+SMN, this wouldn't be new at all, and wouldn't have that much issue. Especially since DPS are on their own adjusted between their DPS and raid utiliy, and that solo-heal/solo-tank are still a thing that people do.

Instead of that, we have three tanks that are pushed exactly the same way, who will keep being eithered imbalanced or just copy-paste of each other. If you only push them in one direction, you can't have all of them be equally effective. And you'll still piss off one part of your playerbase, and probably not a small one...

[Brian_]

Yes, he made a great speech about what he thinks could be a problem. The thing is, in the end it wouldn't change much. He makes it sound real important that you "suddenly have 5 DPS"...when in fact, it's just one DPS and one tank that you have to balance against a tank duo. As for piercing debuff or hypercharge...you can already have DRG+BRD+MCH or MCH/BRD+BLM+SMN, this wouldn't be new at all, and wouldn't have that much issue. Especially since DPS are on their own adjusted between their DPS and raid utiliy, and that solo-heal/solo-tank are still a thing that people do.

You don't have a clue about what you're talking about. DRG + BRD + MCH doesn't happen now because it's a bad comp. You either sacrifice your caster or you sacrifice a melee DPS. If you sacrifice your caster... why are you bringing BRD? The entire point of bringing BRD is for foes. If you are sacrificing your melee DPS, it's likely a NIN and that's a huge DPS and utility loss. BRD + BLM + SMN also doesn't happen now because it's a bad comp. You have to pick between NIN, which will cost you your piercing debuff and BL, or DRG, which will cost you enmity manipulation and trick attack. Also, both comps pigeon hole you into DRK so R.I.PLD. But, when you add 1 DPS onto those comps, suddenly they change completely. You can now bring a double caster BRD comp with DRG AND NIN for full synergy. You can now bring MCH + BRD without sacrificing your caster or melee DPS. You do realize that when you add 1 DPS to skills like hypercharge, foes, BL and trick attack that scale per party member, you're boosting their effectiveness by a multiplier because they are hitting another DPS instead of a tank or a healer.

So yea, to a simpleton it's 1 DPS. To someone who actually understands job synergy and DPS optimization, it means way more. You reference solo-heal and solo-tank fights. Have you ever watched or really analyzed those videos? Because they truly bring your foolishness to light. The A12S AST solo-heal was only possible because the 5 DPS comp had a BRD constantly feeding the AST MP and the extra DPS was enough to push DPS enough to avoid a lot of damage. 1 extra DPS was the difference that enabled AST solo-heal. And, so much for DPS being on their own when your raid DPS has a real impact on damage taken and healing needed. And, a ton of these solo-tank videos have absurd DPS gains -- way more DPS than you'd gain using your simpleton math. Why? Job synergy.

We know for a fact that solo-healer and/or solo-tank comps will not be balanced. That's inarguable. So, again, it's going to take a lot of tuning and tweaking both for jobs and for content to achieve a reasonable balance. The still flawed balanced between jobs we have now took SE an entire expansion to achieve. Just let that sink in.

[Instrumentality]

DRG + BRD + MCH doesn't happen now because it's a bad comp.

I agree with most of what you're saying, but DRG + MCH + BRD + NIN is actually a fantastic composition. I'm pretty sure the fastest kill in the world for A12S is still Dysnomia with that comp. (Someone correct me if there's a faster one.)

Found the vid: Dysnomia 12s.

Edit: I'm pretty sure their MCH was using a 255 weapon in that video, and like a 240 jewelry piece, even. So it wasn't like they were rocking all god tier melds or anything.