Korean Live Letter and Job changes (Translated)

[Shurrikhan]

Well... the thing is that the mnk's debuff doesn't really create any interactions now does it? As far as I know (and please correct me if I'm wrong), the blunt damage type only increases the mnk's damage dealt and no one else's. The piercing debuff only helps drg/mch/brd and the slashing is nin/war/drk/pld. But if you're in a party that is say... drg/war/mnk/whm, then their debuffs don't really help each other and there is no interaction whatsoever. The way I'm looking at it, is by standardizing in to a generalized debuff (for argument's sake let's say it's a physical damage taken debuff), it creates more interaction by allowing drg/mnk/war/nin to increase the damage of everyone else together. Plus it also allows certain classes to increase the damage across the board in ways outside of the debuff.

For example, in the party above, if there is only a single debuff for all physical damage dealer types, I would say let the drg apply with Disembowel so the mnk can omit Dragon Kick for an extra Bootshine and the Warrior won't need to use Storm's Eye and can max their potency with Butcher's Block. I would argue that by standardizing the debuff, you would actually increase the amount of interactions in this case. Also, consider this, if you were to only have one single debuff applied by all those classes, it would also free up several debuff slots in the 24man raids since Dragon Kick/Disembowel/Dancing Edge/Storm's Path would all refresh the same debuff. I get where you're coming from with the homogenization, I know how much you value uniqueness and choice in each Job, really I do. But I think that in this particular situation, the benefits outweigh the negatives.

:: Monk allows for a decent buff to any second Monk's damage, which creates fun synergies in DF content at least.

I'm not saying it's ideal, but if anything we should be moving to let them be raidwide debuffs in distinct ways, rather than all sharing the same vuln debuff (e.g. all being hugely better Trick Attacks that can stack only with Trick Attack).

Short of that, or in the current system, the only change I might recommend is that Delirium be a full potential replacement for Dragon Kick, providing Blunt Resistance Down as well as Intelligence Down. But I don't particularly care for the idea of every melee DPS + Warrior all having a vuln strike. The only benefit, to my mind, that would provide is that we'd want to be more careful not to place them on the same target in any sort of cleave situation where the bonus from the spread would outdo the bonus of the reapplication-during-debuff (15 for DK, 27 for DE, 27 for SE, 23 for DB). But our rotations would become drastically more dull as a result, given how rarely but one person would ever hit that button. As any melee DPS, so long as there is a Warrior, that 6th of my core weaponskill toolset may as well be forgotten. And while that may sit well with your "my rotation is too busy; I feel like my keystrokes are too strictly chosen for me (even though I'm failing to set up my Duality AEs and am dropping my DoTs)" casual NINs, it just wouldn't be for me.

Just a matter of preference: I'd rather have more times I'm using DE at very specific times on my NIN than to never again be using DB (granted that would never happen because of CT) or DK on my DRG or Monk.

[Marxam]

The problem is that the devs can only do so much with a playerbase nigh-obsessed with their compensation issues...er, "efficiency". The whole Zurvan EX debacle proves that with almost frightening clarity.

The only thing ZEX proved is that SE starts caring less about fight design in the last two patches of an expansion, even more so in the last patch leading up to the next expansion. The lack of thought involved in that fight scares me. Why doesn't zurvan put a debuff on the main tank that makes it harder to heal through after his cleaves? Why can both the drk and pld cheese through demon's claw? Why can the adds be solo tanked? They have done this twice btw. In 2.0 they put out Urth's fount and that too was a dps rush. You had to dps everything including the nails and the final burn at the end just solidified that fight as a dps rush.

The problem also lies in DPS players trying to cheat the system by queueing up as tanks or healers and playing both roles shockingly wrong. The devs cannot possibly set those issues right without punishing players who do play their roles the right way.

The same could be said for tanks who queue up as dps or healers, or healers queuing up as tanks or dps. The problem is with SE's game design and constant pandering to the lowest common denominator combined with superficial fixes of higher gear to compensate for lack of skill. They also provide no incentive for the average player to get better in-game. They started with SSS training dummies but that's just at end-game. Players who want to get better will and those that don't simply won't care unless you make them care or they just quit. The lack of consequences for you actions and play style is also another factor to the current meta. In 2.0 I remember actually having to stop before Demon Wall to plan out a strategy. Now I just pull when everyone is close enough to get in to the boss arena. Why? because every boss can be summed up as "dodge aoes, kill adds, burn boss". What's sad is that some people don't even seem to understand those three rules. Case and point is the last 20% of Scathah. People start tunneling and try to burn the boss when there is clearly a large add and or hands are up. I'm sorry but if you are trying to burn a boss with 15% health instead of killing an add that will cast a high raid wide aoe in 20 secs then you clearly have no sense for raiding and deserve to wipe.

TLDR; SE will mess up the balances among the tanks, they don't care about trinity balance and players will still find a way to make the dps meta works because of SE's lack of foresight when it comes to boss/dungeon design. Thank god they are good at writing stories... sometimes.

[BorisDaBlade]

You know, I've never understood the permanent buff idea like nin has. Punish a player for forgetting to hit a button. I get the different poisons change a couple of actions, but seriously make the damage up portion a trait or something.

I'm going to hate Eno being a permanent buff. BLM is gonna be more brain dead than playing PLD and I main both lol.

[Serilda]

The BLM changes could be awesome. As a controller user the sheer bloat of needing Thunder/Thunder II/Thunder III (and indeed Stone II/Stone III etc) on my bars to be halfway decent at playing and handle synced content is really annoying. It kills synced content for me in general; whenever I roulette into synced PVP like Slaughter it's particularly annoying as I don't even have some of the tier 2 spells bound on my PVP hotbars and suddenly can't access important abilities. I feel like quite a few of the standard damage up buffs on DPS jobs can be combined too; if you're weaving the same buffs in for your burst every time anyway, there's very little advantage to wasting button space keeping them all as separate abilities. I'd rather see distinct buffs with distinct effects and merge all of the others together with traits affecting their cooldown/potency as needed to balance them.

Enochian badly needed this change. It's very satisfying to pull out high numbers with a good rotation, but deeply frustrating when it doesn't work out and also when you're just doing normal content that doesn't let you stand and turret in the first place. Making the wrong choice about when to use Enochian only to be locked out of your main source of damage due to a phase change or need to relocate rewards memorisation of encounters way too much and makes the job less fun for anything outside of endgame content. They could make Enochian some kind of stance to toggle (as many people have suggested) like a more relevant version of Ninja poisons, or just reward time-based place in other ways. The current BLM playstyle feels too rigid, punishing and simplistic all at once.

Lastly, I wholly support the calls for 4.x fights to be more healer-intensive. I love healing and yet I'm just out-DPSing my DPSers until I run out of MP rather than doing my job in most content because it's so utterly, utterly redundant. When my undergeared, terrible group first played through ARR we had trouble in all kinds of dungeons thanks to how tricky the healing was and how there were fights which penalised not paying attention; at level 50+ everything suddenly became ludicrously easy other than maybe The Vault in a PUG. I play PVP to compensate for the lack of stimulation PVE healing offers these days.

[AutoWhit]

I love healing and yet I'm just out-DPSing my DPSers until I run out of MP rather than doing my job in most content because it's so utterly, utterly redundant.

I've seen a couple other people say this. Not just here, but other places like YouTube and Reddit. I'll say the same thing here.....if you, as a healer, are out dpsing actual dpsers, then you need to replace your dpsers, because they have no clue what they're doing. It may be possible on trash, and the only reason for this would be if dps aren't using buff cd's (which I don't even bother with on trash, since they aren't needed, unless it's an emergency). You won't out dps any actual dpser, that has a good grasp on the job they're playing, on boss fights.

Note: I'm not disagreeing with anything else in your post. Just tired of healers saying they are out dpsing actual dpsers......sorry, but you aren't out dpsing me

[ADVSS]

Permanent Enochian?! Removal of Thunder II and III in favor of just upping Thunder's potency?!

I know it's the class that Yoshi-P plays in demos, but geez, do they just love BLM more than anything else or something?

5.0 Derplander becomes a BLM for the BLM expansion lol

[Serilda]

Note: I'm not disagreeing with anything else in your post. Just tired of healers saying they are out dpsing actual dpsers......sorry, but you aren't out dpsing me

Oh for sure, I'll get flattened by the top players in a real fight for sure (and I'm WHM main, so I'll run out of steam and end up twiddling my thumbs most of the time after a flashy start regardless). But that makes it even more frustrating, in a way. If I come on my BLM I can put out huge numbers. If I come on my WHM I can put out decent numbers... and maybe occasionally throw a Medica II. So what's the point in being a healer? In PVP I'm working my fingers to the bone keeping people from death, but in PVE I'm mostly an awkward DPS with fewer DPS abilities outside of a few tougher fights. It feels lame as a career healer. I want healing to be far more stressful and exciting in PVE too.

[AutoWhit]

snip

I've never played a healer in any mmo, including this one (it's just not my style of play), but I recently had a discussion about this with some FC mates. I argued the same exact thing you're stating here, and the reason was the whole "should healers dps" debate. I argued that if SE made fights more challenging, so that healers would have to just focus on healing, it might put an end to the debate. But, I had to step back and listen from a perspective I wasn't fully aware of......one person argued that if this was to happen they wouldn't play a healer anymore, because they like the versatility of being able to do both, and if they all of a sudden had to just focus on healing it would be boring for them.

So, now I'm on the fence with the whole debate. I wouldn't want to ruin the fun others are having playing the jobs they play, but I am really tired of the debate......it's old.

[Serilda]

I've never played a healer in any mmo, including this one (it's just not my style of play), but I recently had a discussion about this with some FC mates. I argued the same exact thing you're stating here, and the reason was the whole "should healers dps" debate. I argued that if SE made fights more challenging, so that healers would have to just focus on healing, it might put an end to the debate. But, I had to step back and listen from a perspective I wasn't fully aware of......one person argued that if this was to happen they wouldn't play a healer anymore, because they like the versatility of being able to do both, and if they all of a sudden had to just focus on healing it would be boring for them.

I feel the devs need to resolve this properly one way or the other. Even if your friend enjoys the current hybrid-style play, if he/she starts PVP they'll find it very frustrating as suddenly almost everything is about healing again and hybrid play is actively discouraged. I'm biased since I love healing but I don't feel the solution to the current situation is to remove the need for healing most of the time, the way things seem to have ended up. If they want to support hybrid play I'd rather this was handled as a separate job (and I have no properly thought-out ideas for how to balance this) instead of crushing all of the challenge of healing by making it so ridiculously easy. Maybe your friend would enjoy the healing more in the first place if it was trickier and rewarded skilled play, and brought in more support options rather than pure DPS every time there's a lull in incoming damage?

I do want to keep our DPS options - soloing without them would be lame, and in easy content it's fun to go crazy and help out clearing the fight faster. But I also want to fulfil my primary role of healing in a more satisfying way than clicking Cleric Stance off, lobbing a couple of spells once per minute then going back to the familiar thunk-thunk of Stone 3.

[Radacci]

haven't they talked about enochian before? they said they'd remove the need to upkeep it, but keep the mechanic where you'll need to juggle Fire/Blizz IV, or something, to get certain bonus.

I don't think rampart/shadowskin merge is going to be multi ROLE, but something that any TANK can equip.

i just roll my eyes at the technical hurdles of adding body hair or tattoos...
some equipment will show your chest or whatever, so if you want body hair, you have to shave, for that specific armor?? come on...
it's as stupid as adding beards as head glamor items.
Aion has upgraded their character creator, so why can't they do it in XIV?
Why did they create XIV with so many limitations?