Quote Originally Posted by Saefinn View Post
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..