Alot of hate on new job iterations o.O

[Microbrewed]

I used to main SMN and SCH. SMN is incredibly clunky and nothing lines up and does mid level dps with mediocre support. Oh and that's when you use a perfect rotation. SCH in 8 man content is basically Broil spam mixed with OGCD heals and is incredibly boring. Needless to say I'm looking for a new main.

[dinnertime]

Most dps, perhaps. As should be the focus here. But to say most people would be an over-generalisation. Then again I guess most people play dps.

Well yeah just the DPS since we're at the DPS forums. You're right though, but I'm mostly basing my opinion on what topics are being discussed the most atm and my own perceptions with the DPS jobs currently. I'm certain that at least SMN and MNK are mostly disliked.

[Myon88]

As far as I can tell, the biggest problem I've seen are from summoners who are so good at the job that they basically don't understand what it's like to play the job in any way other than perfectly.

I'd be careful about framing it that way, because it gives the impression that good job design is a matter of subjective taste or something (it isn't). Or that it's okay to design a job around suboptimal gameplay, and veterans are just too set in their ways to appreciate shadowbringers summoner. The reality is that people good at this game (in whatever job) all understand the same few rules and axioms, and it feels good when the design of your job meshes well with these axioms. Some of these would be, for example,

1. Always keep your gcd rolling.
Gcds are unlimited sources of damage while cooldowns are not, so you'll maximize damage if you use them as much as possible and only use cooldowns when they don't interrupt gcds (hence, weaving ogcds between them). This is a big reason why whenever you have something that forces you to clip the gcd (like ninja mudras), people call it 'clunky' or unfun.

2. Powerful skills must be used as often as possible.
This seems obvious, because clearly you will maximize your damage if you use strong skills as much as possible. However it requires multitasking to keep track of these cooldowns in the heat of battle. An average player might forget to press them for a few seconds and not notice, they probably don't think they've made a big mistake anyway.

But good players notice. That's why combat downtime is a big concern when evaluating skills. For summoners, it is especially bitter because their abilities were downgraded in this aspect compared to stormblood. If a boss disappears or dungeon trash dies just before energy drain or phoenix comes off cooldown, you're penalized out of no fault of your own because you were unable to keep their cooldowns rolling - something you could do with aetherflow.

So yeah, you could deliberately triple weave or not use your cooldowns on time, but what purpose would that serve? They understand perfectly well, they just don't like it. This isn't really a matter of taste, it's an objective downgrade.

Since black mage is everyone's darling now, let me give a blm specific example of what they did to summoner:

Imagine if polyglot could not stack to 2, and worse, after it finishes its 30s charge, it does not continue to build toward the next charge - the gauge gets frozen and only restarts when you cast foul or xenoglossy. So, every 30s when polyglot finishes charging, you must use it immediately if you want the gauge to start again. If there's nothing to hit? Too bad. If you're in astral fire and can't spare the time? Too bad. No more double or triple fouls if you use them at just the right moment either.

Are you disgusted yet? Hey, I'm just an average black mage. Lining up a triple xenoglossy in trick attack is way too hard for me anyway. I just do my own thing without noticing what I'm missing, so I don't see anything wrong with this design.

[Kabooa]

Since black mage is everyone's darling now, let me give a blm specific example of what they did to summoner:[/B]

Imagine if polyglot could not stack to 2, and worse, after it finishes its 30s charge, it does not continue to build toward the next charge - the gauge gets frozen and only restarts when you cast foul or xenoglossy. So, every 30s when polyglot finishes charging, you must use it immediately if you want the gauge to start again. If there's nothing to hit? Too bad. If you're in astral fire and can't spare the time? Too bad. No more double or triple fouls if you use them at just the right moment either.

Are you disgusted yet? Hey, I'm just an average black mage. Lining up a triple xenoglossy in trick attack is way too hard for me anyway. I just do my own thing without noticing what I'm missing, so I don't see anything wrong with this design.

We'd get by. Always did.

[Myon88]

Yes it's funny how that works.

If you went to an alternate universe where polyglot worked that way - maybe cause instead of being a gauge element you get a one-time single charge upgrade of scathe to scathe IV that deals 750p (yeah it jumps 3 ranks what you gonna do about it) - I'm sure people would defend that design since they have nothing better to compare it to. That's why seeing the big picture is important to evaluate the design of a job objectively.

On that note, black mage is also useful as an example of job design done right currently, as evidenced by the universal acclaim it has received even from experts at the job. I hope it will at least teach more people what good gameplay looks like, so that they can point at it in the future when things go wrong elsewhere, instead of defending bad decisions. If you can understand why things like xenoglossy and umbral soul work well to keep the rotation smooth and flowing, then conversely you should be able to understand why other job changes produce the opposite effect elsewhere.

[Azeriel]

The forums tends to exaggerate a lot of the dissatisfaction people have with Jobs because it's where we come to give feedback, and the people most incentivized to actually provide that feedback are people who aren't satisfied. Someone on Reddit did a poll on how people felt about their Main jobs, which was then aggregated by a JP user and for the most part people were happy.

Key: Dark Red: Very Satisfied, Light Red: Somewhat Satisfied, Yellow: Indifferent, light blue: Somewhat Dissatisfied, Dark Blue:Very Dissatisfied.

While it isn't perfect since r/FFXIV isn't necessarily representative of the entire player base, it is a decent visualization on how people are probably feeling about it. Pretty much every job is getting at least a 70% general satisfaction or at the very least, 80% aren't unhappy with them. The only jobs that are complete botches to the players are Monk, Scholar and Astro. Everyone else is relatively happy.

I like this chart, and as an ex-AST main, I can safely say the sentiment has been pretty much the same in the Healers' forum.

If we isolate this in just role, I don't know what SE was thinking to break 2 out 3 only healing jobs in the game. 66% of their healing player base are clearly extremely dissatisfied with the changes on their main role, and that explains why there's an increase in Healing AIN recently.

Healing is a stressful job as it is and removing what made it fun didn't help. I have retired my Astrometer for now in favour if my Red Rapier. Because apparently SE only knows how to make the DPS classes fun to play.

[Kabooa]

Yes it's funny how that works.

If you went to an alternate universe where polyglot worked that way - maybe cause instead of being a gauge element you get a one-time single charge upgrade of scathe to scathe IV that deals 750p (yeah it jumps 3 ranks what you gonna do about it) - I'm sure people would defend that design since they have nothing better to compare it to. That's why seeing the big picture is important to evaluate the design of a job objectively.

On that note, black mage is also useful as an example of job design done right currently, as evidenced by the universal acclaim it has received even from experts at the job. I hope it will at least teach more people what good gameplay looks like, so that they can point at it in the future when things go wrong elsewhere, instead of defending bad decisions. If you can understand why things like xenoglossy and umbral soul work well to keep the rotation smooth and flowing, then conversely you should be able to understand why other job changes produce the opposite effect elsewhere.

No, you misunderstand me.

I'm saying they could make that change tomorrow, and we'd get by, like we always did. Fairweather blackmages would go back to whatever DPS is 'the best' and those of us on still on it would adjust.

Let me be clear.

4.X Black Mage was also perhaps the best designed job of that expansion. Losing a stock of Foul but gaining the use of Xenoglossy moving into 5.0 would have been fine, as the real improvements were Despair, the level 72 trait, and the overall MP changes.

[Dyvid]

Myon, do you think we would be better off add Bahamut to DWT or separating Phoenix from FBT? Meaning that you use Trance, recast timer start and Demi-Primal is available right after trance end. In this way Trance would always be rolling like AF was in 4.0 and you could use Demi whenever you need rather than when FBT was back up. Seems like SE gave us two choose on how to make Demi summon work.

[Myon88]

I'm saying they could make that change tomorrow, and we'd get by, like we always did. Fairweather blackmages would go back to whatever DPS is 'the best' and those of us on still on it would adjust.

That's fine, it's good to be resilient. There are more than a couple summoner players I know who are sticking with the job too, despite this being the second expansion in a row the job has launched in an unfortunate state.

I am more concerned with the premise that the degree to which changes to job design succeed exist on a spectrum, and that you can objectively say that some are better than others. If you can see that my example of black mage is inferior to what we currently enjoy, then I think that demonstrates that premise. So I will continue to advocate for summoner, for the benefit of other people who are put off from playing a job they would otherwise want to play.

do you think we would be better off add Bahamut to DWT or separating Phoenix from FBT? Meaning that you use Trance, recast timer start and Demi-Primal is available right after trance end. In this way Trance would always be rolling like AF was in 4.0 and you could use Demi whenever you need rather than when FBT was back up. Seems like SE gave us two choose on how to make Demi summon work.

From a standpoint of designing a job to be tolerant toward combat downtime, there's no question that splitting up FBT and phoenix so that it matches DWT, is better than the reverse - merging DWT and bahamut so that it matches FBT. It is true that it will mean one extra button to press, but it would at least not be a new button since 'summon bahamut' could just transform into 'summon phoenix' after FBT ends.

As long as the trances share a button and the cooldown does not start again until you use the current one, there will always be pressure to activate DWT/FBT on cooldown to maximize damage. If you're in the DWT half of the rotation, then you only lose the deathflare at worst as bahamut is safely contained to a separate button. It's not even a guarantee that you'll lose that deathflare either, as you have up to 15s to stall for time while DWT is active. If it's phoenix, you're forced to enter phoenix trance and summon phoenix at the same time, so the potential loss is greater if the time is not convenient.

And as it happens, there are examples of both these cases in the current extreme primals.

1. In innocence ex, if you are on schedule with your trance timings, the 2nd phoenix trance of the fight happens halfway through the adds phase when innocence's ultimate is charging. If your group has high dps, they will die before you get your 2nd revelation off, and you will lose half the scarlet flames as well. Once upon a time you would just hit aetherflow there, and only summon phoenix after that phase is over and innocence returns, unfortunately we no longer have that option.

2. In titania ex, after the big adds die, there is a period of downtime while she plays out the animation for her ultimate. Dreadwyrm trance comes off cooldown just as this begins, and the correct move here is to use it now even though there's nothing to hit. Luckily, the transition is shorter than 15 seconds so you can quickly deathflare her once she returns without losing anything. If, by pure chance, it was FBT instead of DWT that aligned with this part of the fight, you would stand to lose a lot of damage from nothing but bad luck. It's not fun having it come down to luck as to whether fight timings will be kind to your rotation or not, but that's life for summoner now.

[Dyvid]

Snip

Thank you for your reply. It helps not only us but also SE trying to figure out how to "fix" this glaring issue.

Separating Phoenix from FBT will be be visually painful because it would mean FBT would act like pre 80 and Demi-Phoenix will just be spitting fire and using revelations. If you move the spells to Demi-Phoenix phase than FBT is just DWT with another name. DWT has seen better days and really feels like a placeholder from a bygone era of FFXIV. Sadly SE isn't one to add new spells and abilities until the next xpac cycle, and sadly I think to make the job feel "right" they would need to add some things.

I guess I would say:

• Remove Demi-Phoenix from FBT and deal with spit fire.

• Allow Action to activate Wyrmwave and Scarlet Flame

• Add a 10% to 20% dps increase to Egi while in DWT

• Add a enkindle refresh effect in DWT and FBT so you can use it more often

• Improve and increase the potency of Enkindle, EAI and EAII

• Give Energy Drain/Siphon a max of two charges and make Aetherflow a 4 stack rather than 2

Maybe

• Change Fester and Painflare so that they share a recast timer and make that timer 20s. You could even give it a max charge of 3 making it feel like 4.0

• Have AF the resource to use EAI and EAII