My suggestion for how to fix the current "Synergy Stacking" meta.

[Nominous]

I've been mulling the idea over for a while, and haven't been able to find any downsides.

Check it out. A serious idea to fix it all.

- Levels 60 and 70 unlock additional Cross Role ability slots, bringing the total number of slots to 7.

- Remove Battle Litany, Trick Attack, Brotherhood, Dragon Sight, Devotion, Embolden, Hyper Charge, Foe's Requiem from their respective Jobs. Remove Piercing/Slashing/Blunt resistance down.

- Put all of the above Abilities into Cross Role actions for their respective roles. Re-tool abilities and names (like they did with the current cross roles coming from 2.x/3.x).

- Melee are given Battle Litany, Trick Attack, Brotherhood, Dragon Sight, Piercing Debuff. Can only take (1) of the above.
- Ranged are given Hypercharge, Foe's Requiem, Slashing Debuff. Can only take (1) of the above.
- Magical Ranged are given Embolden and Devotion, Blunt Debuff. Can only take (1) of the above.

That's my solution.

And just for fun- I had even more interesting ideas. Each Job's "Affinity" for a Cross Role gives them extra effects (incentive to take on specific Jobs) when used.

- DRG has "Affinity" to Battle Litany and Dragon Sight. DRG is given a personal Direct Hit percentage increase when using Battle Litany, and boosts personal damage by 5% more when using Dragon Sight.
- NIN has "Affinity" to Trick Attack. When used, "Haste" effect applied to self. Haste speeds up ONLY the rate of auto-attacks for the duration of Trick Attack.
- MNK has "Affinity" to Brotherhood. When used, Meditative Brotherhood granted (current implementation).

Etc etc. The idea is to keep the skill feeling unique for those who gave it to Cross Role, but also, to have flexibility within party-makeup. The party loses nothing for bringing any specific Job, but the specific Job gains something for bringing specific Cross Role.

[LeoLupinos]

I fear everyone will just take the better one.

[thegreatonemal]

Making a new meta changes nothing people will get on that train leaving any classes that fall out of that meta behind. There's no fixing a meta because in this game there's nothing wrong with it. Your issues with it are community based the game is pretty well balanced

[LeoLupinos]

Making a new meta changes nothing people will get on that train leaving any classes that fall out of that meta behind. There's no fixing a meta because in this game there's nothing wrong with it. Your issues with it are community based the game is pretty well balanced

Totaly right.

I don't know why so much players bother about 10% over 10s over a 10min battle, it's so little.

[Nominous]

Making a new meta changes nothing people will get on that train leaving any classes that fall out of that meta behind. There's no fixing a meta because in this game there's nothing wrong with it. Your issues with it are community based the game is pretty well balanced

If there's nothing wrong with it, there'd be no threads about it. As it stands, there are quite a few, on the NA/EU AND the JP forums. Clearly people care, you don't have to look far to see that. And it's relevant as ever in the game, when certain Jobs carry a stigma with them. Not in all content, I'll give you that. But it's enough to where it's worth talking about. Never grow complacent with things being "Average" or mediocre. Always strive for better. Or at least, that's what SE SHOULD be doing.

[Nominous]

I fear everyone will just take the better one.

The idea would be to swap for whatever party composition makes the most sense as far as ROLE (melee/phys-range/mag-range), not JOB. If you wanted slashing for the tanks, and melee, you have to take a ranged (MCH or BRD would give you the same benefits). If you wanted piercing for the phys-ranged, you'd need a melee (SAM, MNK, NIN, or DRG would all benefit you the same). Etc etc.

The one thing that's kind of terrible regardless, is resistance debuffs, which flat out shouldn't exist anymore as they're too restrictive, even in the best of scenarios. But they seem to really believe it's some miracle of gameplay to tie together Jobs like that.

[wereotter]

Poor monk.... will no one give us blunt debuff??

One of the suggestions that would be a bit better than redistributing the buffs would be to change how some of them work entirely. As well as your suggestions introduce new problems. Just like DRG is pretty much mandatory right now because of the piercing debuff they bring, BRD under your suggestions will have an always include position in a group given they could have the slashing debuff no one else gets in addition to the other plethora of utility buffs they have. Additionally if the damage debuffs are cross role skills, I would expect, especially in roulettes and 24-man content, no one will take these skills.

So here's another way to handle that:
remove blunt resist down, slashing resist down, and piercing resist down from the game entirely. Replace the skills on all jobs that have them with magic resist down and physical resist down. My suggestion is to distribute those skills between samurai, monk, dragoon, and ninja with magic resist down going onto ninja and monk and physical resist down on dragoon and samurai.

It would create a situation of one of two melee jobs for each slot, but it does change things from the pretty much mandatory DRG/NIN load out, but still leaves raid groups alone that are currently running that combo.

[Nominous]

It would create a situation of one of two melee jobs for each slot, but it does change things from the pretty much mandatory DRG/NIN load out, but still leaves raid groups alone that are currently running that combo.

Yeah, I've said it every time I've brought this up (some of those times in this thread): Resistance debuffs are incredibly restrictive and just shouldn't exist. If they HAVE to exist, like the developers (or at least YoshiP) seem to believe, they NEED to be spread out in a way where there's no lopsided representation. So I'd agree your idea (one that's been shared a lot) is good, but it needs removed.

[Pastahnak]

I don't see how making jobs even more similar to each other is a good thing and damage would obviously need to be adjusted, just imagine the dps of a samurai with access to the raid utility of trick attack.

[Seraphor]

Just because it's a problem, doesn't means it's a problem that can be fixed in the game.

Until we remove the job system and give everyone every ability, þherrs always going to be "something" that's objectively better than "something else". At which point the optimisation crowd will flock to a meta and it'll infect the community.

Meanwhile all this homogenization in the name of 'balance' is progressively sucking all the variety and depth from the game.

There's nothing wrong with synergy, just provide it in various places instead of just one.
Give damage type debuffs to a couple other classes.