We may get changes to cleric stance and esuna

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I wouldn't be entirely surprised if Exalted Detriment, Leeches and Esuna were all merged into a single cross role ability. As for Cleric, I still have my suspicions they'll remove it in favour of scaling healer DPS through mind, with obvious adjustments made elsewhere to offset the sharp damage increase that would entail. If not, this could just been them moving Cleric over to the cross role section.

Would like to see each healer get more of their own stance system, and cleric stance not become a healer default just for variation sake. Of course going that route will be more challenging to balance though lol

I like the calm lands look, wonder how big that area of the game will be :3 (not the dungeon but the related zone).. Also is it just me or does the shield lob animation look larger? Like the Spirals and stuff. Could be I'm not used to seeing it at that angle though, or they tweaked it for the fun of it on their own side - like what might have happened to Titan Egi.

Unfortunately, there is just no way to properly balance this. Whichever healer gets designated "the healer" (i.e. cannot do damage) becomes an immediate dead job upon reaching Savage. I mean, look at White Mage currently. No one values it's raw healing over Astro's balance because everything has a threshold. If all three healers/tanks can heal or mitigate through the checks respectively, it boils down to which does the most damage.

[ToasterMan]

Unfortunately, there is just no way to properly balance this. Whichever healer gets designated "the healer" (i.e. cannot do damage) becomes an immediate dead job upon reaching Savage. I mean, look at White Mage currently. No one values it's raw healing over Astro's balance because everything has a threshold. If all three healers/tanks can heal or mitigate through the checks respectively, it boils down to which does the most damage.

Yup. The developers have designed themselves into a corner and it's going to take some real creativity to get out of it.

[Shougun]

Unfortunately, there is just no way to properly balance this. Whichever healer gets designated "the healer" (i.e. cannot do damage) becomes an immediate dead job upon reaching Savage. I mean, look at White Mage currently. No one values it's raw healing over Astro's balance because everything has a threshold. If all three healers/tanks can heal or mitigate through the checks respectively, it boils down to which does the most damage.

Out of curiosity would you suggest all tank stances be made the same then?

[Bourne_Endeavor]

Out of curiosity would you suggest all tank stances be made the same then?

Yes and no. While I think they ought to have a unique feel to them, all of them should be off the GCD. Warrior stance dances feels completely seamless whereas Dark Knight's cumbersome. That all said, it isn't necessarily the core abilities that are the issue but the overall philosophy. You cannot have a specialized job with heavily scripted fights, at least not with how the devs want everything to do everything. Right now, Paladin gets left out more often than not because Dark Knight just does most things better. If they want to continue this route, then there needs to be clear drawbacks. Say a boss does huge raid-wide damage. A Scholar/Astro comp should have to stop DPSing and seriously prep/heal through it whereas a White Mage could more easily handle things but lacks elsewhere. Basically, if they want specialized jobs, they have to actually be specialists. The fact Astro can heal at nearly the same level as WHM defeats its purpose completely.

[Kaethra]

Many healers cant even heal as it stands now please dont make it even worse than it is now

Most of the time when I see healing fails in the DF, its from healer's not taking off Cleric Stance. Or taking it off too late.

[Vhailor]

Cleric Stance and Esuna are so hard, i know.

They aren't, but it would be easy for SE to simplify them even further (for example, by removing the cooldown timer after Cleric's Stance is activated).

It's less them "dumbing down" combat, and more them making cross-class skills more accessible(Let me tell you how much I hate getting Provoke!) and reducing bloat, as the game requires like 3-4 full hotbars for some jobs. It's not "Let's dumb down Esuna", it's "every healer needs Esuna, maybe we should just put that in the role skill pool".

I'm not so sure I agree. There are conflicting statements on this. Some of what has come out of SE reinforces the idea that it's just skill consolidation, which is A-OK (provided jobs still maintain a distinct identity, which I'm not so worried about). On the other hand, there has also been word floating out, IIRC, that the development team is looking to shrink the gap between the AAA players and everyone else. Given how little detail has been provided, it's hard to know for sure what their plans are, hence my statement.

I love the phrase "skill to master" used by players of videogames. High level engineering, medical practice, Olympic athletics, those are skills to be mastered. This is pushing buttons in a set pattern learned from the internet within a precision window of 1 second. When I hear people complain about "removing skill" I can't help but laugh at the self important absurdity of it.

I don't think this is an appropriate analogy. There are countless activities that humans engage in, and virtually all of them require skill to master. Riding a bike is a skill to master, for example, as is driving. So is playing chess, or sketching, or playing music, or what have you. In fact, to turn your own example against you - playing the piano involves pushing buttons in a set pattern that you can learn from the internet. The precision window is naturally narrower, but that's the only difference. Are you prepared to "laugh at the self important absurdity" of a pianist claiming their profession requires skill?

What you're actually doing is distinguishing between important or difficult skills, and trivial skills. They're all skills, though, and they all take a certain amount of time and experience to master. If you want to see this applied to FFXIV's case, go sit a non-gamer in front of a computer, and start them off with a new character. The experience will be eye-opening.

What is truly self-important and absurd, though, is you standing on a soapbox trying to make fun of my opinion, all because I used a phrase that is clearly a pet peeve for you.

[Gumbercules]

All I'll say is, if SE dumbs the system down to 'bring up the bottom' so to speak, I'm going to be severely disinclined to continue subscribing even occasionally. There's little enough skill involved in combat as-is; it cannot be reduced.

You might be in for a bad time then XD One of the goals of the battle changes is to close the "skill gap" between players. >.> Personally i do not mind this since an incredibly sub optimal player can add considerable time to a dungeon run etc. I am curious how they intend to achieve this though, I mean how do you raise the bottom line without affecting the top? (more of a rhetoric question :P I am guessing they will "increase" the contribution from the baselines like GCD skills and auto attacks while reducing the contribution of oGCDs and long CD skills, though Ill admit idk how i feel about this possibility >.>)

[Vhailor]

You might be in for a bad time then XD One of the goals of the battle changes is to close the "skill gap" between players. >.> Personally i do not mind this since an incredibly sub optimal player can add considerable time to a dungeon run etc. I am curious how they intend to achieve this though, I mean how do you raise the bottom line without affecting the top? (more of a rhetoric question :P I am guessing they will "increase" the contribution from the baselines like GCD skills and auto attacks while reducing the contribution of oGCDs and long CD skills, though Ill admit idk how i feel about this possibility >.>)

I'm expecting to be in for a bad time, honestly. I'm hoping 4.0 won't take this step, but if it does, I've plenty of other games to play =)

[Gumbercules]

I'm expecting to be in for a bad time, honestly. I'm hoping 4.0 won't take this step, but if it does, I've plenty of other games to play =)

my example imo is what I consider the most "overreaching" example though, when they were talking about closing the gap they also brought up UI changes to make it easier to keep track of buffs. So it could just mean they want to make it easier to keep track of things like greased lighting houton etc. Things of that sort i wouldn't mind in the least. (namely cuz my eyesight isn't that great) They did also mention changes o enochian though, and I suspect that might be more along the lines of making enochian a "passive" to where it is always on with another mechanic taking its current spot for an upkeep CD. So in this case, fire 4 rotation becomes the new baseline for example, while still having a similar playstyle to "reward" those that maintain the new upkeep move.

Overall though, I personally do not mind them closing the gap a bit, since imo in the long run it benefits "all" at the cost of, at worst, some bruised egos.

[Jetstream_Fox]

I am curious how they intend to achieve this though, I mean how do you raise the bottom line without affecting the top?

You don't exactly lose anything or gain anything here. If the system is just being redesigned to feature skills every class needs due to fights requiring certain skills, then no skill is truly increased, however, if class skills are being combined then yes there will be a slight skill increase, but that would only really help melee classes out as it would make the typical 1,2,3 combo a thing of the past, it could also help healers by adding stoneskin and protect into one defensive buff. But that is based off my interpretation of the "new system." Plus I wouldn't worry about overall player performance being massively jumped up, with the changes this also hypothetically brings new rotations, plus added 4.0 skills to weave in, new classes, and new fights, it's not like out the door people are going to be world first caliber. There is going to be a lot that needs to digested before any real answers come to light if there was any real negative or positive increase.