Stormblood Expansion was a mistake...

[Claviusnex]

I don't think it should never have been made. I like the MSQ and other stroy lines. I do think SE made a mistake by fixing things that didn't need fixing and neglecting the areas that do need to be addressed. In other words they broke things that worked and left stuff that was broken still broken. Overall I like HW better with SB in the middle of the three releases. If I had been here from the beginning my rankings might have been different though HW would still be on top.

[Penthea]

I do think SE made a mistake by fixing things that didn't need fixing and neglecting the areas that do need to be addressed.

Please elaborate on this. The first major SB fix that comes to mind is dropping combat cross class skills in favour of role actions. Personally I have found this change to be excellent and honestly long overdue.

[Jaibamon]

Funny, I am having more fun than Heavensward.

And as a Healer, I felt there are more mechanics that require tight healing moments. Shinryu ex requires a constant HPS, and an actual Healer check. Neo/Ex Death has lots of moments to DPS, yet the Damage burst are so high that requires a lot of pratique to keep the party alive without using too much resources.

I don't know what you mean about everything doable solo with no effort. The latest raid seems pretty challenging and the mechanics requires good teamwork, just look at O3S.

I mean. Is ok if you don't find fun anymore, but don't speak in general.

[Vidu]

I'm getting the impression here that this is someone being salty about the adjustments being made to some of the jobs with 4.2...

I've been playing sicne ARR beta and I very much enjoyed and still enjoy Stormblood!
While I've played neither AST nor MCN to an extend, I feel that the RNG is a lot better on them now than it was in HW - MCN has bullets to safely trigger their attacks (granted, those were in HW already) and AST got new means to use unwanted cards.
Bards is a lot better to play now compared to HW, paladin finally useful again, samurai the first melee class I actually had fun playing, RDM a cool new caster, scholar after a few adjustments a lot of fun (even though I do miss cleric stance...) - from what I can tell from my friends they do enjoy playing WHM and BLM (Flare deluxe!) still, so...

As a maintank I also dont feel as if generating aggro has changed much...? Or maybe I just got to used to it by now, so that I dont notice anymore.
Pushing for DPS has always been a thing btw - nothing to do with Stormblood, just with how the game works in general. And, breaking news: Thats not gonna change, if you dont like it, find a game with a chore mechanic your do like - yes, yes, that sounds like a cheap argument, but honestly: I dont like guns, so I'm not playing Battlefield and going into their fourm (I assume there is one?) to tell them how much better the game would be without all those firearms.
If you dont like how DPS-focussed the game is and you'd rather play a tank-only or heal-only game, I'm sure there are those out there...

For me, Stormblood introduced a lot of new and fun mechanics - Omega 3 was a really nice fight! to just mention one example - the story was great again (and personally I was happy to get away from all those dragons, finally - I will admit that specially that part is very subjective though), the music beautiful, some of the new gear really pretty (Shisui, Bardams, Abania-gear, PvP coming to mind right now - probably more if I'd think more about it), beautiful new landscapes...
Rabanstre motivated me to finally play FF12 and FFT to get all those refrences and now I'm enjoying this raid even more, finding all those little hints!

While the first two EX-primals were a bit underwhelming, Shinryu made up for that by quite a bit!

I'm not saying this game is perfect - it has obvious flaws, like the whole housing problem etc.
But all in all: I am enjoying it and Stormblood has certainly not been a mistake.

Get over the jobchanges and the adjustments they have to make for balance sake - I get that it upsets people having their favorite job changed (I wasnt to happy with bard in HW... and then again for the first two dungeons I wasnt happy with bard in SB, but I ended up playing both, with the SB-one clearly being the better version!), but you're to shortsighted if you bin the whole expansions because your favorite job gets a small nerf. Or because you realise now that the game is dps-heavy...
Sure, everyone is entitled to their own opinion and I'm not gonna try to change anyones mind - in my opinion however Stormblood was and is a good expansions - the game is getting a bit stale by now, but the story really hooked me, its still beautiful, I'm still having fun with the gameplay and the fights, so...

[Kazrah]

I'm gonna go with "mad cuz drk" for the OP's reasoning here.

Just because there's room for improvement doesn't mean that the expansion is a mistake.

[Stormfur]

I can see how class balance can be a mess. Not only do you have to balance each class' output individually but also for different group compositions and actions.

Not to mention that with every new expansion there will be new classes which might then throw all the other classes off-balance. I mean, everything seems to have this need to be mathematically precise. Gives me a headache just thinking about it.

That doesn't excuse the issue, of course, but I think class balancing is very much an ongoing work-in-progress. They have no way of testing these changes on as large of a scale as the millions of players who play this game -- and there's a BIG difference between that, and a comparatively small QA team.

We are, in short, paying to be guinea pigs. But I don't mind at all! They're getting data on how these classes are interacting on a large scale, and who's to say that come 4.25 the class that got all the nerfs will be restored to its former glory. I'm happy to let them course-correct from the data they get.

I didn't think I'd enjoy Stormblood that much, to be honest. I thought it was going to be all HOO-RAH MILITARY RAWR stuff. But so far I really like it. We're inside a mad computer simulation one minute, and in ancient cities the next, and soon we'll be in an enchanted forest. There's something for everyone.

[TheCount]

Wouldn't say the whole expansion was a mistake, I can certainly say the revamp for DRK was a big mistake though. They took so much away from them and just made the class feel broken and bad compared to its former self. Where's the third combo with that int down debuff, where's scourge which was an amazing dot, where's the whole flavor surrounding the gradual drain of power (mana) that darkside took from you. Where's shadowskin, where's the better reprisal, where's the baked-in stun we used to have. Where's the actually useful everytime you use it blood price, where's the non-nerfed into being pointless dark passenger.

Dark Knight as it is now feels weak in three respects - damage, mitigation, utility.

It's a badly designed mess that has you constantly juggling mana in a bad way because of the overpriced mana cost of everything. In fact, our main mitigation tool (which by the way we only get at max level, yay.) adds to this problem because that also takes a massive load of mana away from you. It wouldn't be such a problem if you could still use blood price against single targets and expect to get a good deal out of it, but no it's nerfed into the ground. If you don't want to be mana starved you practically have to go out of tank stance to use blood weapon which is not always a good idea depending on what part of the boss fight you are in, not to mention this returns us to that whole 'lacking mitigation' part of Dark Knights.

Either that or you have to play so incredibly conservative with your mana that it goes at the cost of the rest of your performance. This while other tanks can just keep going non-stop without issue AND have more mitigation and utility and damage while doing so. Don't get me wrong, you can do the encounters just fine as a Dark Knight. The problem is you'll know, and feel, that the Dark Knight does this less effectively than the other two. It pains me that whenever I go on my Dark Knight instead of my other two tanks I know the party will be getting a lesser tank because of it, because I know and can see exactly where the other two would have been better in every respect.

[MagiusNecros]

I'm gonna go with "mad cuz drk" for the OP's reasoning here.

Just because there's room for improvement doesn't mean that the expansion is a mistake.

I dunno man. Raubahn Ex and Pipin Savage tell me expansion was a mistake. Took forever to get a clear at launch.

On a more serious note, class balance is garbage since no one is happy. And devs just doing their own thing since fan feedback is worthless and only statistics matter.

Also yes. DRK's have every reason to be upset. DRK's been wanting changes in HW. Have large concerns since SB launch. Have been asking for a rework for months. Who they give it to? Warrior. K.

So I imagine a lot of DRK's who had their class gutted alongside it's stiff playstyle from what was fast, fluid, rewarding and impactful are quite upset. And can only watch and either deal with it, unsub, or play another job. And it really hurts.

[Awful]

I think SBs a solid expansion they just need to deviate from their normal content scheduling I mean we get 2 dungeons this patch, a raid tier, and class balance changes which aren't really balance changes. People were super hyped for the combat revamp when all we got was gauges which I can totally see why people are upset over it, not to mention they said they wanted to balance the tanks for SB and they haven't at all.

For me I still play my main class Drk and i'll continue to play it I just wish there was more give is all but I know we still have more expansion to go so I am interested to see what 4.25 holds with Eureka and relic weapons n such because it's been 6 months and no relic or any kind of new content that's not a raid or dungeons that we've gotten to play around with.

SB is a step back as well as a step forward which is kinda odd to think about really, I say step back because some classes lost a lot or haven't really changed at all and others have solidified their spot even further and not to mention Sam/Rdm has barely been changed or touched for 6 months. I'm still glad I got SB so I can play with my friends and raid in an MMO I truly do love FFXIV but they do make questionable decisions sometimes no company is perfect but there needs to be more testing/communication with us and more attention on the bigger pictures rather than small band aids.

Just my 2 cents is all.

[Avatre]

I dunno man. Raubahn Ex and Pipin Savage tell me expansion was a mistake. Took forever to get a clear at launch.

That was more of a server restriction put in place so that it didn't crash...which caused days upon days for people to not be able to progress(I took the launch week of SB off from work, and I was stuck at Minstrel's Ballad Raubahn Savage EX for almost the entire time, even playing in the middle of the night).