what I hope for 4.0 Battle System

[Iromi]

I liked 1.23 also. The stats felt meaningful and there was much more to the battle system then "dps"

I'd like to see the kind of stuff Dzian mentioned come back. Give the game some more depth.

[Shurrikhan]

I liked 1.23 also. The stats felt meaningful and there was much more to the battle system then "dps"

I'd like to see the kind of stuff Dzian mentioned come back. Give the game some more depth.

Did we play the same game?... If it didn't clear the encounter as quickly and reliably as possible, it wasn't taken. And at the heart of that was dps. The only distinctions were, just as now, "event" and "overall" dps (aka "burst" and "sustain").

And there was far less depth or complexity available to compositional decisions or even rotational decisions based on composition than in ARR and HW. I enjoyed 1.23 for the most part, and even before Yoshi's rework, thinking that ARR had definitely wasted some serious opportunities in the development of its combat system (as had Yoshi's rework before it), but I don't see any criteria from which you can arrive at that conclusion.

At best that might be that tanks and healers weren't quite as strong in 1.x, and therefore there was greater use of dps off-tanks and the occasional off-heal (a less specialized layout that I preferred slightly), but even the stats of those times only gave the illusion of choice apart from perhaps mitigation vs. eHP for tanks. The rest all funneled into exactly the same purpose and gameplay, but simply required optimal ratios in order to maximize.

@OP:
"Roles" are, in the end, mere specializations for which a degree of primary capabilities (damage-dealing in the case of any fight cleared by killing the enemies, or healing in any fight cleared by topping off a given NPC, etc.) is sacrificed to allow a higher degree of capacity for handling secondary functions (anything tactic that improves your raid's ability to clear the encounter that is not a direct, or primary, capacity, such as by reducing the ratio of incoming to outgoing damage) or tertiary functions (anything that improves upon those secondary functions while not directly contributing to them).

"Roles" are not job descriptions outlining your responsibilities. They are something that you must maximize correctly in order to redeem the cost of having taken you, a specialist with thereby less primary capabilities. Stop thinking of specialists as the given; they are an investment, and unless intentionally overpowered, they are a costly one. And if you do not allow a given tank, for example, an avenue for reclaiming that cost when the need for their specialty is limited, then rather than allowing a range of different gameplay styles for your tanks—from gambling into excess mitigation or under-mitigation based on the team's actions and tookits—then the question shifts instead from the tank's "how do I play" to the raid's "do we reeaaally have to take a tank?" or, when encounter designs forces you to take a tank who is otherwise contributing nothing (effectively standing in the room to prevent death by compositional debuff) that question shifts to "why are we playing a game that gives invalidates player choice?"

@Dzian
While the lack of enemy variety does certainly add to the lackluster-ness of our stats, consider the opposite — if our stat choices were mandated by enemy type. You'd have to swap out your legs, belt, and gloves just to handle this one agile enemy due to its added evasion, only to swap back for the next where that accuracy is unnecessary and you want as much damage as possible. Moreover, none of these changes actually have any effect on evasion, they just force you to carry more near-equal ilvl gear in order to be optimal for a fight, and to spend more time in your inventory screens.

To be honest, we still have exactly that. You just need to raid to see it. When your "casual content set" uses some 160 less accuracy than your "raid set", both around the same ilvl, it can be nice padding boost to go ahead and keep a hold of that raid drop that you can't possibly use in raids yet due to too little accuracy on your other pieces. But that's all that Chimera vs. Garuda ever amounted to, and likewise accuracy has only been alike to "gear tax" since then, its fee increasing as you progress through content tiers (just as Chimera -> Garuda did in 1.23).

I don't feel the loss in stats from 1.23, because they had no gameplay effect once the community had pigeonholed you into a specific "role". Yoshida-era designs have since progressively furthered this rutting of toolkits into singular means of acceptable play, and finally removed the long-running option of increased output (both damage and mitigation) vs. increased eHP for tanks in the vit/str reform, but at least he has all of 1&1/2 gameplay-meaningful stats (Crit on crit-proc jobs, and Spell/Skill Speed for rotational adjustment at particular breakpoints). While balancing issues still prevent Skill Speed from being as meaningful as it could be, that's at least an improvement over 1.23's variety, which amounted to nothing but numbers (what little hints it left as to gameplay niching, such as Elemental Fist burst for Monks, etc., being left too pitiful and unbalanced to ever come to light).

:: As for Aegis Boon, the only thing that invalidated it in the context of ARR/HW that it was up to a literal 200% DR. 'Sure, let me eat the guaranteed kill at 1 HP and be topped off for my trouble, on a CD equitable to Shelltron (its modern analog)?'

tl;dr:

That said, I personally would rather we move away from the role system, rather than reinforce it further and naturally disagree with your suggestions as a result. Where you want to increase the control of tanks over the denominator, I'd rather everyone got more control over it. Where you want a specific support role, I'd rather everyone have supportive interactions. And I mean interactions, where both people need to react and adjust to each other, instead of just throwing a buff at someone and never bothering with it again.

This.

[Shurrikhan]

The difference is that aegis boon as a result had a big impact on a battle and it made a huge difference. a tank that used it well really stood out from a tank that didn't.

by comparison generally speaking most of the time no one would even notice if a paladin used shelltron or not because it has next to no visible impact on the flow of a battle. hell in most content you could get by without using it all and many people wouldn't even notice because of how much difference it makes.. it's part of why many people say tanking feels unsatisfying because there no real impact to your skills.

Have you healed a Sophia Ex where your PLD didn't use Shelltron correctly? I think you'd notice real quick-like. In terms of "(nearly) died / did not (nearly) die", it's generally just as significant as AB was. It's just not as ridiculously overpowered.

[javid]

Have you healed a Sophia Ex where your PLD didn't use Shelltron correctly? I think you'd notice real quick-like. In terms of "(nearly) died / did not (nearly) die", it's generally just as significant as AB was. It's just not as ridiculously overpowered.

lol sheltron is very useful. however it and two other DRK skills are the only skills that rewards you for tanking; (inner beast if you wanna be technical but 100% dmg absorb on a 300 potency attack ... is meh; but still a reward for tanking)

But I'm hoping they'll encourage more dmg on tanks and individual party members forces us to use cds more and feel more like a tank.