Has Gauges helped you a lot?

[Vahlnir]

I haven't played them all, but RDM and DRG's gauge are definitely helpful. DRG's makes watching Blood of the Dragon easier, and RDM is just...well, I can't imagine RDM without it. Works so well.

[Felis]

Monk gage is really useless. It's just given us a timer in a seperate place to our other timers.

But it is the monk's most important timer, which you can now place seperate from the other timers in the size you want.

[Leadleaf]

They are basically glorified buff timers for the jobs I play most (monk, dragoon) and I'll be toggling these back to the oldstyle as soon as I'm able. Although I can understand their use in other jobs like the tanks.

[Jim_Berry]

I don't know if it's the gauges, or the changes to class skills, but I can DEFINITELY play much better.

As a NIN before Stormblood, my damage was lacking. The change to Shadowfang helps me to focus more on other things instead of using Shadowfang and Dancing Edge separately. I like how I get the damage AND the slashing debuff at the same time, with ot without a WAR in party.

[Sunako]

I dont see much difference are my aetherflows in gauge bar or buff bar personally.

[Hestzhyen]

SAM: helpful, nice and simple
RDM: essential; wish it showed procs too
MCH: essential and functional, but could just as easily go back to the buff status bar
BRD: okay, but BRD now has so many CDs to juggle that the song bar is yet another thing to monitor even if it's useful. I end up looking at that, my DoT timers, and my hotbar more than the fight sometimes.
BLM: not intuitive at all, but kind of helpful once you realise what each part of it is. Would rather track things on my buff bar though.
SMN: Eh. It's simple and not useless but again, would rather track it on my buff bar instead of having to glance at that huge "you have x stacks of y" indicator.
SCH: Aetherflow is whatever, prefer buff bar icons but I can live with the new UI if I have to. Fairy Gauge is crap and feels like an obstruction as a huge separate thing. Can it be made smaller and attached to the Aetherflow bar somehow if we have to keep it?
AST: didn't like it at first, can live with it now. Like the BLM gauge I didn't find it intuitive but it does it's job well enough. However, I will only truly be okay with it if I can see fellow AST's cards again. I hate not knowing what they have when I'm trying to decide what to do with what I draw.
WHM: Bleh. Utterly ignorable since DB lights up when you can use it and the CDR is basically invisible power even with the gauge. You either have abilities on CD or you don't, so while reducing the timer on certain big skills is nice, it's not something that needs an obtrusive UI.

Haven't played the rest enough to judge well but overall the gauges aren't really helping or hindering me. They're just different. Some classes needed them, others didn't, but they all got one anyway. I hope 4.1 takes the pain out of the worst offenders.

[JunseiKei]

it just gives me yet another spot I need to look at (and I was so accustomed to checking my own buff/debuff bar for job-specific things like

Also, let us not forget that you still need to consult those same buff and debuff bars for content like savage raids, further making the job gauges a bit questionable. Pre- Stormblood, everything was in one nice spot.

I know my husband loves the gauges for MNK. He says it's less self buff clutter and lets you see what you actually need to see (buffs from others, debuffs from fights).

[Zfz]

I agree, in general the gauges are "just another extra thing to monitor" and often do more harm than good. The reason for that is that they're mostly half-assed attempts without a clear purose.

Were they supposed to be HUDs to eliminate the need to focus on the buff bars? Then they're obvious failures because they don't show procs, so we still have to keep our eyes on the buff list anyway. If the new HUD cannot completely replace the buff/debuff list, then it fails as a HUD.

I hope the devs rethink these gauges and at least have a clear purpose for them. Don't let them be just another obstruction to the game, another distraction during combat, another annoyance.

[dinnertime]

I don't feel like it's a hindrance or anything. For me it feels the same as it used to be, instead it's larger visuals instead of tiny icons with numbers on most of them.
In some jobs like AST it definitely helps.
The new jobs were obviously made with the gauges in mind.

[Exiled_Tonberry]

We went from most jobs starring at their buffs to starring at their buffs AND job bar.


......Good job?