So after waiting for about 2 weeks to see the consequence of homogenization

[Drayos]

snip

The metas have always consisted of, 1 ranged 1 magical 2 melee, double support in one role would either make one outright win or make 2 ranged 1 magical 1 melee outright win

And given there’s more melee jobs then both other roles, statistically there’s more melee mains comparatively, excluding the fact SAM and DRG are prolly the most popular jobs in the game.

The options never reduced as the meta has never been changed really, its just the case that two support in one role would be very hard to put in a position where u neither stack them nor pick one over the other.

Again I’m not saying they made the right choice, nor am I agreeing with it’s turn out I merely am stating the likely reasons to why this has happened

[Deceptus]

Honestly, at the end of the day Job X being at the top and Job Y being at the bottom isn't that relevant when

1) You can literally level any job on the same character

2) Leveling isn't that hard.

So if you're a single job you level, say Ninja, I don't have a lot of sympathy for you. Level something else. Playstyles aren't that different between the jobs anymore, especially if all you care about is numbers. Certain Jobs share gear (Nin / Drg being the outliers).

Stronger jobs and weaker jobs have then the case since day 1 of any MMO. It happens. You can adjust or complain.

[OmegaStrongtan]

Honestly, at the end of the day Job X being at the top and Job Y being at the bottom isn't that relevant when

1) You can literally level any job on the same character

2) Leveling isn't that hard.

So if you're a single job you level, say Ninja, I don't have a lot of sympathy for you. Level something else. Playstyles aren't that different between the jobs anymore, especially if all you care about is numbers. Certain Jobs share gear (Nin / Drg being the outliers).

Stronger jobs and weaker jobs have then the case since day 1 of any MMO. It happens. You can adjust or complain.

So you are saying people who enjoy Ninja have to play another Job if they want to raid or GTFO?

[Kabooa]

So you are saying people who enjoy Ninja have to play another Job if they want to raid or GTFO?

No.

They can enjoy Ninja and raid.

[Deceptus]

So you are saying people who enjoy Ninja have to play another Job if they want to raid or GTFO?

No, I'm just saying if you simply have only 1 job leveled you're severely limiting your options and have little room to complain when the one job you've leveled is weak.

Especially when there are easy alternatives.

People should be less concerned about specific jobs and more concerned about roles. I.E. is there a job in a role that performs well? This is also why you should level all the jobs in a role if you like that role style. Think of the jobs in the roles as specializations.

Ranged magic. Has a dot spec (SMN) a direct damage spec (BLM) and a support spec (RDM)

Healers: Shield Spec (SCH) Direct healing spec (WHM) Fluid spec / Buffer (AST)

[Shurrikhan]

They didn’t want two supports in one role, due to one would just outright win to the other depending on which had the higher RDPS value.

No, they wouldn't. This was a nonissue for the last three expansions every time each Ranged was decently balanced. Fight by fight, player skill by player skill with one job or the next, apart from periods of infamously bad balance players were plenty free to choose between MCH and Bard. And how the heck have we forgotten about the frequency with which BOTH were taken? They've never been especially limited to a single slot. Not in ARR. Not in HW. Certainly not in SB.

You're again mistaking a failure (or, refusal) to balance jobs as sufficient reason to homogenize. It's not. You can have diversity and balance. Developers need only not to neglect their jobs in the contexts of any given tier -- or, better, their tiers in the contexts of their jobs. (Don't time all mechanics almost exclusively to the benefit of one job's CD timings or disbenefit of a few others.) I don't understand why you're playing into their narrative here; it's a vain attempt to excuse poor execution with fatalism and overgeneralizations.

[Cled-cat]

I think they really need to get a bit more inventive with the jobs tbh. I know there’s many people who care mostly about the damage numbers and how balanced they are, and that’s totally understandable. However for myself (and I assume a lot of other people who are getting pretty disillusioned with the direction that SE’s taking with the jobs) I would prefer them to prioritise making the jobs feel as fun and engaging as possible, maybe even in priority to pure balance. I could live with being the “weakest” dps or healer (within reason, not ridiculously weaker) if my job had other legitimately fun and engaging mechanics besides a useless cure and niche rez (looming at you Red Mage!). The dual cast system is interesting, yes, but that’s all Red Mage has going for them.

[MPNZ]

THREAD

Ok... The status of the three rng phys jobs are basically like two having reached their concepts (dnc, MCH) , and one that is basically close to it but moving away from.

In terms of support: the nerfs to "bind" and status effect immunities in instances are most likely due to their innability to balance, or fear of what basically happened with Bard in Sb's party comps, or generally "unfair" advantages, and bypassing how they intended the instances to run by their script (LV5 DEATH)

Loss: Bards individual support in storm blood was unweildly clense, a Heal buff that usually ended up on the affected player after they were fully healed, an very small crit buff, a buff that should have been a passive while singing, a diverse def buff, and foie's requeim, which was as hard to reapply as placing a rubber duck in the bath tub. Of those BRD lost foie and gained a more universal buff with less an extreme time limit. And, everything else was just them trading pallisade and refresh for deduffs that are currently rendered almost useless and unused in all content due to vulnerability immunities.

It also lost BfB, miseries end, and a lot of decision making.

Gains: Soul gauge (in theme), Apex arrow (badly designed/implemented, and zero impact), Shadowbite (doesn't thematically fit or synergize with brd's design or themes exactly like sidewinder, easily replaced by implementing charges to RoD/BL, and really feels out of touch in terms of design), improved proc rates (though VB & WB should never proc RF arrow, and the proc buff isn't connected to the cyclical songs), Armies muse (totally luv it, but buff everyone too please), and a more universal dmg reduction buff that only lasts for like ten seconds (seriously...).

Overall, it's really gutted, offers very little utility because of the overall encounter design, and within the range of being considered false advertising according just to consolidate a bunch of criticism. Of those are also concerns of Rng phys jobs being permanently benched in meta comps after nin and RDM in part because of numbers or things like fun-factor which is why ppl disliked PLD in ARR (super boring)

[Connor]

Honestly, at the end of the day Job X being at the top and Job Y being at the bottom isn't that relevant when

1) You can literally level any job on the same character

2) Leveling isn't that hard.

So if you're a single job you level, say Ninja, I don't have a lot of sympathy for you. Level something else. Playstyles aren't that different between the jobs anymore, especially if all you care about is numbers. Certain Jobs share gear (Nin / Drg being the outliers).

Stronger jobs and weaker jobs have then the case since day 1 of any MMO. It happens. You can adjust or complain.

I guess all the Astrologian’s should stop complaining about the Card changes then? Scholars should just stop complaining about the loss of their DoTs? It’s just a playstyle right, just level a better one? Isn’t it a little unfair to say that because it’s easy to change class you automatically should if something happens to your class that you didn’t like?

Honestly I think 90% of players don’t care about where their job actually is on the ‘DPS rankings. At least for me personally they could make a job do 20% of the overall DPS of any other job and it wouldn’t really matter as long as it fun and felt good to play. I don’t think it’s fair to say ‘just play something better’, because if we all did there’s only be two tank jobs, two healers, two melee, one caster and one ranged DPS.

There isn’t much difference between classes besides the aesthetics, but if someone prefers one aesthetic over a another, surely it wouldn’t make sense to tell them to choose another one if someone happened to the aesthetic they enjoyed to start with. I mean, there isn’t much difference between food, it’s all just sugars and proteins at the end of the day. But that doesn’t mean you wouldn’t feel unhappy if someone took away a food you like while you’re eating it then tell you that you can’t have the food you started with. Only anything else except that. And getting a similar thing is a nice consolation, but when it’s not what you thought you’d be eating it’s never going to taste as good. The fact that all food is fundamentally the same is besides the point, it isn’t fair for you to have something you like taken away then being expected to have something you don’t like as much because they’re technically the same.

We shouldn’t just give up on a job because ‘others in the role are better / same’. And we shouldn’t give up on mechanics like made a job unique, like Astrogian cards / Bard songs / Red Mage Cure/Raise, because a lot of the time they’re at least part of why people started playing the job in the first place. Just because someone always has to be at the bottom doesn’t mean it can’t be fun for those jobs. I mean, I don’t know of anyone who’s done so, but if someone only levels and enjoys a single job why should they have to level another one? Wasn’t that the whole point of removing the cross-class system? Just because the armoury system gives one character access to every job, surely it should be up to the player what they will and won’t level

I don’t think it’s right to say that you should just give up on a class that isn’t fun anymore because you can easily get another, because isn’t that just kinda sweeping the issues under the carpet? If it’s not a ‘legitimate’ issue that’s being discussed I don’t think the developers would give it much consideration anyway (like someone asking for a job to be game breakingly broken in some way)

[HyoMinPark]

The metas have always consisted of, 1 ranged 1 magical 2 melee, double support in one role would either make one outright win or make 2 ranged 1 magical 1 melee outright win.

This isn't true. Meta has not always been 2 melee/1 caster/1 physical ranged.

Gordias and Midas had this comp sometimes, because if you had a caster, you generally had a BRD because Foe's was +10% magic damage back then, but comps with MCH were generally all physical jobs because HW Hypercharge was +10% physical damage. Creator meta was 2 melee/2 physical ranged. BRD and MCH had been buffed to the point of being utterly broken, plus piercing was 10% back then. So the meta was NIN/DRG/BRD/MCH. This same comp found its way into Deltascape up until Patch 4.1, where SMN finally ousted MCH because the developers broke the former.

Speedkill metas in SB were usually 2 melee/1 caster/1 physical ranged. But parse run meta was still double physical ranged because of BRD's utility and MCH had Hypercharge - casters didn't have raid buffs that competed with it outside of Devotion, which was kind of meh. You could also do fun stuff with double Refresh and Foe Requiem.