Have we given up on SCH?

[Saefinn]

It's been obvious even since beta though. every design choice they've made since 2.0 has slowly backed them further and further into this dps corner they're in and now they have no room to do anything to set classes apart. thats why all the tanks and dps have been so heavily homogenized and everything is the same. they really can't do very much with anything unless they make some radical changes and push themselves out of the corner they're trapped in. this obsession with balance needs to be f*d off and bring back some diversity in jobs mechanics bosses and encounters in general.

also why isnt my fairy named or in the party list so people can at least see where it is in the myriad of flashy effects. whispering dawn booom noone gets it cos theyre waaaayyyyy over there

I'm starting to think SE should perhaps look at a new "mode" to the game.

As you put it they've worked themselves in a corner and they got two problems to solve that are arguably at odds with each other. It also sounds like WoW found themselves in the same position.

On the one hand you've got balance.
On the other you've got a unique and fun gameplay experience.

Those who are most concerned with balance tend to be higher-end raiders who are playing with a competitive edge to try and get the best results and hit the top percentile of players. And those who aspire to be such. And people who may be more focused on content and clearing it, rather than the window by which they interact with it. So homogenisation in favour of balance may work for them as balance is more important here.
Then there's those who love RPG's, having job fantasy and variety of jobs to play to offer different interactions and experiences and varying play styles. For us the more variety there is and the more interesting the job is to play is more suitable here and balance is less important as long as we're not gimp to the point we're useless or that people with the wrong attitude kick us from runs.
I think a leaf could be taken out of PvP's book. Have a "Raider" 'mode' so to speak. Maybe it'll be the jobs more or less as they currently are. I think they could do two options here, make it only active for Savage and possibily extremes. Then all the balance focus could be isolated to certain content where you're still having fun. Outside of this, they could be a little more lax in terms of balance in favour of having the jobs work better for people to play.

When PvP did it, they only had to worry about PvP balance away from PvE balanced and I think created a better, more streamlined and fun experience for PvP without it impacting anything else. But in this case, I don't think a Raid PvE mode would need to remove anything from the current system, as it appears to be already be designed with PvE balance in mind and nobody would lose anything.

[Dzian]

I'm starting to think SE should perhaps look at a new "mode" to the game.

As you put it they've worked themselves in a corner and they got two problems to solve that are arguably at odds with each other. It also sounds like WoW found themselves in the same position.

On the one hand you've got balance.
On the other you've got a unique and fun gameplay experience.

I think the issue is how they try and attain balance. Instead of attain balance through diversity and uniquness they insist on making every job be strong at everything and that's why they corner themselves. If you give jobs some actual distinct differences you can attain alevel of baalnce through variety and weaknesses.

To borrow from a recent thread, When you look at tanks back in Alex you had Paladin which was your solid physical damage tank but pretty lame at tanking magic damage. You had dark which was a solid magic tank but weak physical tank. And Warrior which was kinda of in between both. All distinctly different strengths and weakness and yet reasonbly balanced in terms of tanking capabilities. What then tipped the scales and got paladin screwed wasn't the way the jobs were designed but rather the way an entire tier of content was almost exclusively magic damage orientated. So instead of fix the content design they just went and made every job strong at everything and pushed themselves even further into the corner they're in.

Tanks happen to highlight this so well because they're at the front line of every encounter and it was obvious the direction the game was going in right back in early ARR when tanks started dropping fending gear for striking gear because staying alive was a joke and later swapping shield oath for sword oath. Later still completely laughing at the idea of the new tenacity stat. They can change jobs a thousand times but they wont get anywhere unless they sort the encounter designs out.

Same is true for healers. healing will forever be a joke as long as encounters are scripted and predictable and players know to the exact second when they will need to press Lustrate or ED or whatever.

and has even been true for dps where ogcd stuns, silences and even mobility tools like triple cast got spammed on cool down just for a minor dps increase. because they were rarely ever needed for there intended purposes.

making every job the same and every job strong at everything has all but cemented them into a corner which is again why so many people say every fight in the game is exactly the same thing..