Dear SE, stop homogenizing jobs

[JunseiKei]

BA was more of a raid over everything else we have so far.

How was BA anymore of a raid over everything else in this game? It's literally just like any other tier/24 man with a special-raise-only difficulty modifier.

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My two cents on jobs and this so-called homogenization:

Jobs of the same types have been given a core kit, with different flairs to those kits. When specific things need to be done across those jobs for content creation's sake, they need to be added to that role. They may then implement quality of life changes, like all tank stances are oGCD now, whereas WAR was the only job with that unique trait. All of the tanks have a heal of some sort, but even now, WAR still has the best self-sufficiency at no cost (and as a healer main, I definitely love WARs over the other tanks when I'm trying to push personal numbers).

The FFXIV development team probably have a class design document that they follow. The issue therein lies of what the players are convinced the identity of the job is or should be versus what the development team intended it to be.

[ForteNightshade]

How was BA anymore of a raid over everything else in this game? It's literally just like any other tier/24 man with a special-raise-only difficulty modifier..

Because you eventually had to get to each boss by killing actually threatening trash mobs. That, and everything happened in one massive instance. I'd say that is much more akin to a raid than zoning directly into an instance with a boss waiting for you.

They will stop homogenizing when people stop crying and excluding other jobs from PF because there is a 2.7% or whatever difference in DPS from the meta composition. Anyone remembers WHM in 3.5, Zurvan patch? PF almost completely locked WHM out in favor of AST players, even though WHMs were completely capable of clearing that fight and likely with higher clear rates because there was a bunch of bad AST players at the time.

IMO they do a pretty good job while doing that level of balancing for this kind of gameplay (Savage/Ultimate raiding, i.e.: DPS matters and very strict rotations most of the time). I don't know any other MMO that has savage+ level of raiding, decent balance and very defined and different jobs and class fantasies, all at the same time, seems pretty unrealistic to me.

Try 10%. The difference between Red Mage and Black Mage is absolutely massive—to the point Red Mage literally serves one purpose: Raise bot. It's completely useless otherwise. People really need to stop dismissing job balance like it isn't a big deal when the current disparity is so one-sided. Certain jobs can perform far below average and still offer more to their respective groups than top tier players in other jobs. A Black Mage or Dragoon who dies shouldn't outpace a Summoner or Dancer yet both can. Just to emphasise this point. The disparity is so bad, triple melee is better than taking any of the Range even if that means a melee or tank will have to disengage periodically.

As for your Zurvan reference. First, I very seldom saw White Mage being locked out. Regardless, you're quoting a period where Astro was absolutely broken; offering essentially an AoE Trick Attack or 20% on a single target. White Mage, meanwhile, did crap damage and had the worst MP economy without question. Sure, it could still clear. But Astro did everything better.

Don't blame the playerbase for wanting a far superior job, which, in turn, makes content like Savage easier to clear. That fault lies on the dev team for not balancing the jobs properly. Case in point, no one locks out Warrior despite it being the worst tank. You don't often see Samurai locked out even if it's objectively inferior to Monk and Dragoon. It's almost as though people care less when the difference isn't staggeringly one-sided. Admittedly, FFlogs' change to rDPS certainly helped. But lets not pretend exclusion has nothing to do with poor balancing from the dev team.

[Aomine1992]

They will stop homogenizing when people stop crying and excluding other jobs from PF because there is a 2.7% or whatever difference in DPS from the meta composition. Anyone remembers WHM in 3.5, Zurvan patch? PF almost completely locked WHM out in favor of AST players, even though WHMs were completely capable of clearing that fight and likely with higher clear rates because there was a bunch of bad AST players at the time.

2.7% lol what game you playing cause BLM is eating us casters for breakfast hell im full bis and can still be out dmg’ed by an average BLM not in bis because they are that absurdly ahead. WHM was barely excluded and was more so excluded in SB if you want to go that route but still barely unless it was a speed run.

People are complaining because of what i just mentioned. Balance is nothing to take lightly because without it BRD and MCH would still be casting, BLM enochain would be as it was in HW, PLD would still have hate issues....people asking for balance isn’t ruining the game or calling for homogenization. It’s lazy development that leads to this kind of stuff happening. Some classes were just so broken that they didn’t even know where to start but instead just simplified all classes and roles.

Your complaints against balance are completely irrelevant to what’s happening now and is more so on the developers for not taking the time to make class skills meaningful like they did with BLM. BLM right now is your perfect class with very very very minimum issues and plays like no other class.

[JunseiKei]

Because you eventually had to get to each boss by killing actually threatening trash mobs. That, and everything happened in one massive instance. I'd say that is much more akin to a raid than zoning directly into an instance with a boss waiting for you.

Aside from the threatening mobs, it's just like the 24-man raids, which was my point.

Also, Coils and Alexander did have adds. People hated it. It wasn't particularly hard to kill the adds that you needed to clear every week to then get to the boss. The adds weren't exactly like open world mobs, but not quite like the gatekeepers like Faust were. The dev team did away with them. Personally, I enjoy the boss rush-like raids.

[Eothas]

Try 10%. The difference between Red Mage and Black Mage is absolutely massive—to the point Red Mage literally serves one purpose: Raise bot. It's completely useless otherwise.

Fair enough. I have not been paying attention to the current meta, pretty much skipped this tier to play classic, but this is kind of my point in general. In a PUG having ~10% less DPS in exchange for raises can be pretty acceptable, just decrease the gap a little bit. Sure you can argue that if someone needs raise in the first place they are doing something wrong, but then I'd say you can still get a clear out of it, unless it's cutting edge raiding. Remove RDM raises and increase its DPS and it will be just another copy, keep its raise and it will be the new FoTM. If we assume everyone is playing perfectly there's no way to have variety without having a clear best job for its function. What I'm trying to say is that I think RDM is not useless, it's weaker in a optimal run, but that's to be expected if we don't want homogenization, right?

About Zurvan, Astro would cut what, a few dozen seconds from a run? That's assuming optimal play. I don't think that's enough to lock out possibly great WHMs for possibly mediocre Astros. In a Static where everyone is expecting the best or in an actual speedrun PF, sure. I think that kind of attitude we saw in 3.5 slowly affects how the developers manage balance, they don't want to have a job branded useless because it has ~10% less DPS. I don't say anything about WHM's healing advantage because Astro also had an extremely powerful healing kit (CU used optimally was just waay too strong) but you get my point.

[Shurrikhan]

Aside from the threatening mobs, it's just like the 24-man raids, which was my point.

Aside from the enemies being threatening, Savage is also just like Normal. And yet...

[JunseiKei]

Aside from the enemies being threatening, Savage is also just like Normal. And yet...

... and yet it's difficult enough between the average player and above average+ player that makes it unique enough. BA's gimmick is the special-raise-only modifier that makes it remotely difficult. The adds in BA are a gimmick as you can 1HKO with Death and even reflect sprites and magus. Everything else is standard 'don't stand there, let tank pull and get hate' things that we learned at least 70 levels ago (or 20 years ago across different games). The place is literally 24-man tier difficulty.

[Auryan]

... and yet it's difficult enough between the average player and above average+ player that makes it unique enough. BA's gimmick is the special-raise-only modifier that makes it remotely difficult. The adds in BA are a gimmick as you can 1HKO with Death and even reflect sprites and magus. Everything else is standard 'don't stand there, let tank pull and get hate' things that we learned at least 70 levels ago (or 20 years ago across different games). The place is literally 24-man tier difficulty.

I'm not sure why you're trying to demean BA, I disagree, but okay. I remember when Hydatos/BA first came out and people were playing it hilariously safe by hugging the corridor walls to not get killed by a trap. Or when people started panicking when they didn't know you could interrupt the centaurs' berserk ability and they started slaughtering people left and right. That is something completely different than anything I experienced with a 24 man. Even if that sense of danger didn't last, the first few runs sure created a lot of anxiety and fear. Hell, to this day I get antsy when facing AV and Ozma because of the nagging fear that I'll mishandle the orbs or I didn't notice that I had the bomb debuff.

But if you want to reduce things down to such a base level, then yeah, the boss mechanics aren't that difficult, but that's not where most of BA's difficulty lies anyway. It's in the individual player realizing that their actions can not only get themselves killed, but can lead to the entire raid falling apart.

[JunseiKei]

I'm not sure why you're trying to demean BA, I disagree, but okay. I remember when Hydatos/BA first came out and people were playing it hilariously safe by hugging the corridor walls to not get killed by a trap. Or when people started panicking when they didn't know you could interrupt the centaurs' berserk ability and they started slaughtering people left and right. That is something completely different than anything I experienced with a 24 man. Even if that sense of danger didn't last, the first few runs sure created a lot of anxiety and fear. Hell, to this day I get antsy when facing AV and Ozma because of the nagging fear that I'll mishandle the orbs or I didn't notice that I had the bomb debuff.

But if you want to reduce things down to such a base level, then yeah, the boss mechanics aren't that difficult, but that's not where most of BA's difficulty lies anyway. It's in the individual player realizing that their actions can not only get themselves killed, but can lead to the entire raid falling apart.

I'm not demeaning BA, as if it had feelings - I'm stating facts. I'm going to call blue when it's blue and not let personal attachments to it change that view. For the record, I enjoyed BA. Any early prog where guides haven't been written yet all feel scary because it's not familiar yet. The difficulty in this whole game is knowing that anything you do can lead to a party wipe in any 8 man content (and 4 man in the case of Rathalos).

[Sloprano]

Had no stake in the balance between jobs or raids when playing Scholar in ARR and HW, scratched my head at some Stormblood changes, but it was still bearable. Shadowbringers is where this balance seem to have caught up with me. Scholar today feels like the level 32 White Mage I left to puruse Arcanist in ARR because I found stone/aero + healing skills a far cry from the cavalcade of dots, pet hotbars and tools on ACN and later SCH. If we are to still have no specialization beyond being able to have every job on every character why are they trying to make the resemble each other so much. If the game was only Trials and Raid bosses where every fight was contained and sterilzied around the strict script I could see this work, but there are still 200+ duties, solo quests, Deep Dungeons, Eureka, Role Quest and not to mention: MSQ solo duties where close to no healing or even much coordination is required all I think would benefit from jobs being a world apart and play entirely different.