Korean Live Letter and Job changes (Translated)

[Shurrikhan]

Unless they design fights where you're severely punished for lacking the burst healing of a White Mage, it won't matter what they do. Frankly speaking, I want them to do precisely that. There should be a significant trade off for buffing your damage to the extent Astro does. Right now, there is literally no drawback to bring one but a massive DPS loss if you omit them. Although all still speculative, their refusal to account for Balance and the debuff issues is disconcerting. They seem more concerned with viability than acceptability. Yes, White Mage and Paladin can clear Savage but I wish you well attempting to find raid groups willing to take them. This tier saw White Mage drop a staggering 50% due to the potency of Astro. That is only going to increase if their philosophy is only viability.

I agree. I agree SO much.

But it will never happen, because creating content that's so difficult to heal you feel you NEED a WHM will cause imbalance. That's the problem with a job that specializes in higher healing. The content has to be able to be cleared by ALL healers, which means they'll never make Cure III a necessity, which in turn means you'll never need the higher burst healing a WHM potentially brings.

To be honest though, in some situations, AST would still have better controlled burst than WHM...

I absolutely agree. My stance on AST is that it was just massively over-"balanced"..
They buffed its ability as a healer, in addition to the thing that made them desirable - Balance.
In my opinion, all they needed to do to make AST viable was to improve their cards. They didn't need the healing buffs.

I think the major thing that AST needs is a rollback to the old Balance that wasn't nearly as strong as it is today.

I'm fine with the buff to the cards in general but Balance didn't need to be touched. There was no reason to buff that particular card as it was the one thing that made people "draw" themselves toward bringing AST to raids.

Why buff the one thing that made them strong / desirable even further?
They really have 2 options in my opinion..
1) Keep the healing buffs, but nerf Balance back to its old state. Keep the new spread CD's etc.
2) Tone down their healing buffs, keep the Balance buff.

Shameless plug here: I think the massive healing buffs should be to a degree rolled back. All that has ever been needed was better usability of cards. However, I believe that includes the need for each card to be more usable as a means of healing, or even entirely versatile. Take Balance for instance. What if, rather than increasing damage by 10%, it simply increased your primary stat by 8%? Now it's healer- and tank-usable. Alternatively, you have Bole, which similarly was useful only on and for tanks. What if it allowed a portion of overhealing to "bloom" onto nearby allies, or caused the target to partly share health pools with nearby allies? Now it becomes useful either for non-tanks as well, or even on low-HP non-tanks.

Arrow already has this function to some degree, although speed is rarely so significant as actual damage in that it has no effect on DoTs and reduces relative resource value (relative potency per MP or TP). I'd like to see some buffs to it as well. They may have to stem from universal mechanics changes, however (e.g. TP and/or MP ticking per GCD).

Spear runs into a similar issue where it is useful only pre-burst and even then, perfected, only really outperforms even the pre-buffed Balance if there is a particular need for those CDs to come up faster and/or if those CDs include non-damaging effects (tank CDs). The card's usability really should have a lot less to do with exactly when it's to be used as on who, comparing those benefits to extending the next card's duration.

Similarly, you could do a lot with higher percentile effectiveness, but with capped totals. Ewer at present has too small an MP bonus to affect BLM rotations except in the most annoying of ways. Were it to be more far effective, even if lasting a much shorter time, at least it'd see usability. The same obviously applies to Spire.

I don't recommend caps for everything, but if you are going to have a card effect for which the window is irrelevant (as long as you don't cap MP/TP within it), then it may as well give a relevant level of effectiveness. Or, bring back the percentile cost reductions from Ewer and Spire to some degree, giving back that sense of a window. But make it a big deal, more effective in, say, an AoE spam than would Balance and simply regenerating resources between strikes (or after having finished off the enemy that 10% faster).

I can definitely agree with you on this, but I also see a lot of posters demonize simplicity as though it's some horrible thing. Having a wider range of viable Jobs with differing skill floors/ceiling is a good thing overall in my opinion.

I agree in theory. However, in practice, most developers fail to consider across each encounter designed how far the output gap between high skill floor/ceiling (difficult) and low skill floor/ceiling (easy) classes may tighten, or even flip, in interaction with certain mechanics. Sometimes the easy build is superior in certain fights even in the hands of an absolutely perfect player simply because it has far fewer possible pitfalls, making it relatively immune to CD waste or uptime loss, etc. It's those fights, where people who enjoy a challenge are forced to play the superior "easy mode" class or build that end up giving the idea a bad wrap.

However, personally, I'm also of the opinion that these should only be build-wide variance, not class-wide, so long as the class is the center of time and currency spent, rather than the player in general. If each challenge or task's worth of experience acquisition applied to all classes seemingly relevant to that task or challenge and systems like weekly caps and job-specific currency expenditure didn't promote focusing on one class, then I could see these individual classes as, basically, just builds, between which the player can easily swap with just a matter of getting into the swing of the new gameplay rather than requiring an additional process of leveling and/or gearing. But alas XIV does not presently work that way, and I think it would be a shame therefore if each class didn't have access to both a high and lower skill-floor/cap way of play. (E.g. WM-only or dance-less Bard, easy BotD-hold rotation, easy burn BLM, etc.)

[Krysanthia]

There's not really anything they can do about that: In each and every fight in this game, you "Win" if the enemy HP reaches 0, which requires damage and nothing else.

This is technically true, but Ichorous Ire is a good example of how they can make boss fights much less focused on doing absolute max DPS and instead focus on other mechanics. Now whether or not they can make those kind of fights engaging consistently is another matter, but the possibility has certainly been proven by them.

[swiss_Momo]

Ehhh, the plan to make Enochian a perma-buff with some dammage bonus to those who can do the proper rotation isn't any big news. We already knew that since last year when that big Famitsu interview from US FanFest came out

I personally find it more concerning that they consider making the marketboards cross-server...

And that the answer regarding the NPC dating system was "we're not sure yet if we'll actually implement that" instead of "that was just an April fools joke".
(I'd totally love to be able to date queen Scathatch though <3)

[Duelle]

I'm not sure I agree here. The playerbase is only obsessed with DPS because SE's content encourages it.

Not so much the content, but the way both the battle system and class design is tuned. That's what has allowed bad habits to form.

Some content involves fairly brutal DPS checks (typically EX Primals and Savage Raids), which obviously encourages players to optimize DPS. That said, mechanics-based content encourages it too, since SE doesn't effectively counter people 'pushing' mechanics and thereby simplifying a fight via higher-than-intended DPS. At an even more fundamental level, the design of FFXIV encourages rapid-fire spamming of short pieces of content, rather than more involved content that doesn't require, nor benefit from, spamming.

The thing is that DPS checks are there to challenge the DPSers in the group. There's encounters that are tank encounters (read: your tank not messing up leads to you getting the clear) and healing-intensive encounters. The third part of that is DPS check encounters.

This said, it isn't something mechanics alone can fix. You need to look at gameplay for the three roles as well.

They could design mechanics that punish rapid damage-dealing

This is counter-intuitive and sort of pisses on the DPS. I was not a fan of this when they tried it with Pharos Sirius (adds on the first boss spawn at certain HP percentages).

or mechanics that draw the attention of the party away from a boss for periods of time.

Unfortunately, for SE this translates into "more Dive Bombs and clones of Final Liberation". Add control would be a good approach, but I've yet to see SE try it in a way that is not "here's something else for you to hit for a while".

[Remedi]

I would like to point out that the actual translation had a MIGHT before any changes as in they are not final and they are atm mostly brainstorming

[bswpayton]

I hear people calling for more damage but its already way few healers and tanks than every other job Im sure they can make challenging content for some and still make it to where the majority of the base will still attempt to try the job.

[Zojha]

This is technically true, but Ichorous Ire is a good example of how they can make boss fights much less focused on doing absolute max DPS and instead focus on other mechanics.

In the process making Damage dealers irrelevant. I don't know about you, but in that fight, I only /sit where the spriggan spawns and wait for the tank and healer to do the job. Sometimes, I even just tab out and listen to music because tank and healer can easily kill the spriggan themselves.

As I said, it's an option indeed. You can also punish DPS for doing good via insta-gib mechanics like in Ifrit EX. Heck, you can even make a boss that insta-gibs you if you deal more than X DPS, or a boss in which damage dealers are prohibited from joining the instance in the first place. You can make a boss where you need to heal an NPC against the boss to win or a poison chamber boss in which all you need is to survive Y minutes without any enemies present in the first place.

It's quite possible to brute-force it if you really want. Is it good design, tho'? Is it fun and rewarding? Or are you just designing it to prove a point?

[ToasterMan]

This is technically true, but Ichorous Ire is a good example of how they can make boss fights much less focused on doing absolute max DPS and instead focus on other mechanics. Now whether or not they can make those kind of fights engaging consistently is another matter, but the possibility has certainly been proven by them.

Totally agree with this. Unfortunately, I don't know if SE wants to design more content like this. Remember Steps of faith? The reason the DPS meta got so prominent was because of gordias. Top groups had to squeeze out every possible DPS point just to clear it. The mentality never went away and has since trickled down to the rest of the community. People don't believe me when I say gordias was one of the worst things to happen to this game but it's the truth.

[loreleidiangelo]

I hear people calling for more damage but its already way few healers and tanks than every other job Im sure they can make challenging content for some and still make it to where the majority of the base will still attempt to try the job.

At the risk of painting a giant target on my forehead with this statement, I'm going to say that I will never adhere to the belief that classes should be balanced around the weekend players who pick them up for faster queues on casual content. Don't misconstrue this as a statement that expert should be a butt-clenching wild ride of HP spikes and Holmgangs on every pull, but I do think if a tank is pulling 2-3 groups at a time then said tank and healer should absolutely be on point with healing and cooldowns, and DPS should be popping buffs and doing proper AOE to ensure that the mobs die before the other two run out of gas.

Mass pulling should not be the standard due to lack of difficulty, it should be the privilege of coordinated groups of reasonably skilled players. That type of balance doesn't edge mediocre players out of playing the harder roles, it just means they'll be doing single pulls or the occasional double pull rather than chain-dragging everything to the next SE-implemented artificial barricade while the DPS do sub-par AOE and the healer sits in Cleric Stance almost the whole time (or worse, standing around overhealing or doing nothing).

It's also worth noting that I don't think more outgoing damage is the solution either - when two healers using their instant-casts like Lustrate or Tetra is enough to pull a tank from the danger zone to almost-full HP, it doesn't matter how much damage goes out - two healers coordinating will be able to powerhouse it through ease. Healing needs either some massive scaling changes in SB or a full remake in order for there to be any serious shift in how much Cleric Stance is being used.

Punishing DPS for not sucking is also never the right solution, either. Tanks and heals should be kept engaged at their primary roles to prevent them from spending so much time DPSing, not accidentally wipe the group by contributing some extra damage at the wrong time. That would just encourage idling rather than more interesting gameplay, and I certainly don't want that.

[bswpayton]

At the risk of painting a giant target on my forehead with this statement, I'm going to say that I will never adhere to the belief that classes should be balanced around the weekend players who pick them up for faster queues on casual content. Don't misconstrue this as a statement that expert should be a butt-clenching wild ride of HP spikes and Holmgangs on every pull, but I do think if a tank is

Hmm I just don't know I'm kinda all over the place with this , because I feel like if you make things so daunting it will continue to create an environment to where we have more people who spend their time crafting and chatting than we do people doing actual in game content. Ive seen it more lately where people will get out of their comfort content zone if players are willing to work with them, for me thats the ultimate goal id like to see I dont like seeing no bonus in almost every pf I see.

I dont care for how players a little bit behind the curve are treated, if you make healing even harder than it is you will just have more dps, I really feel as tho the only thing Id like are changes to whm and palidan and thats it. The others are fine leave them the way they are, we have to allow people to feel like they have access to content , and that its ok to mess up but learn in the process. Id like to have less people that think they are so great that if something goes wrong that they dont have time to deal with you and will leave at the drop of a hat. Im over this, its the people whom struggle the ones ,who may not be there yet skill wise but have the patience to fill in slots in content and make the game more lively. Its so many people who dont do content because of the community itself not the content and these are people who log in everyday that I know, so demanding punishing mechanics will only create more monks and ninjas.

Instead of people who can learn to heal, or be good tanks which is clearly more needed, instead of great players demanding that se makes content be made grueling just for their sake. They may need to realize that there will never be a time where something is going to suit the challenge that they want simply because they are just that skilled, the way content is now is good we really dont need it to be amped up other than maybe an even more hardcore version of savage other than that things are fine. Its so many people in this game that dungeons actually scare them av, the vault stuff like that which really aernt that hard I think as far as ur everyday content needs to somewhat hover around this area anything else will just drive the wedge of us in them even further.