3, 2, 1 Lets Jam!

[Gruntler]

I actually wish the all of the traits and weaponskill/spells/abilities that the devs got rid of in both Stormblood and Shadowbringers came back because the traits actually felt like they served a purpose, which was balancing, as ironic and funny as that sounds... and the tutorial should end at level 50 where we just get nothing but a ton of traits which only serve to balance various points of end game content that expansions of any MMORPG forgets even existed... only to be suddenly remember that it exists still, despite people reminding them that said content has always existed...

Bold of you to claim those traits existed for balancing when this is the first expansion where tanks are actually balanced, instead of 'Take Warrior for every fight ever.'

[DRKoftheAzure]

Bold of you to claim those traits existed for balancing when this is the first expansion where tanks are actually balanced, instead of 'Take Warrior for every fight ever.'

TL;DR of what I'm going to say is; I didn't say it was perfect or good, but good enough to expand upon (and is better than Fire IV spam design) and make later level ups feel more special rather than empty experience that I wish for a level squish...



Long version:

In ARR, it was probably so bad that people ran double WAR because PLD didn't really do a lot even with specific cross-class skills like Cure, and Stoneskin and Protect on PLD was all that PLD was ever good for (assuming the player in question got WHM to the levels need to unlock those skill for PLD) outside of the bare minimum which I like to call it as "the PLD curse of bare minimum"

Though WAR was basically diet DRK before DRK was even introduced back in ARR, and the devs probably realized this which is why DRK had Cross-Class skills that drew from WAR abilities over DRG abilities(though I wished jobs had access to more than 2 sets of classes for cross-class abilities)

Stormblood was the second expansion that started to push for small amounts of homogenization, which was too bad but it could have been done a lot better... Then Shadowbringers went overboard and lost a lot of job/class identity in the process in the name of balance...

I think Shadowbringers shafted DRK so hard in the name of balance that I think it's more unbalanced than WAR just because of how poorly designed it's abilities are compared to the other 3 tanks because the other 3 do what DRK does but so much better and DRK only still exists in FF14 because FF legacy, but Fell Cleave spam and Demi-Bahamut is not well designed for the more slow and stylish GCD that a lot of classes have, and are so boring to look at that I would rather go play something else that doesn't have either of those design choices, and DRK has a lot design problems...

Granted combos have their own balancing problem, mostly because of phase transitions (with add phases) and enrage timers, which BOTH need to be done away with for normal modes... You can still have them for the Hard(assuming they bring this back)/Extreme/Savage/Ultimate fights.

It also doesn't help that the devs insist every tank needs a Fire IV spam on a cooldown starting with PLD and then WAR followed shortly after in Stormblood, which then DRK got as well because WARs loved Fell Cleave spam so much... which by the way; the only way you can make that type of spam work is if you happen to be caster DPS OR BRD OR you have at least 2 spells that serve a different purposes like PLD.

It also doesn't help that PLD and GNB AoE combos seem to look a lot better compared to DRK and WAR AoE combos, and the GNB and PLD AoE combos also do more damage than the DRK and WAR AoE combos in total, and that's probably because of the spam burst that WAR and DRK have, which shouldn't make sense because PLD has the exact same burst in spell form, yet PLD does more damage than WAR and DRK, and GNB does more damage than PLD and because PLD does more damage than DRK and WAR GNB is already best by default due to how much damage it does with at least 1 situational class cooldown(Heart of Light only good for mitigating magic damage) whereas DRK has 3 situational class cooldowns at best and 4 at worst(Dark Mind/Missionary being only good for mitigating magic damage, Living Dead due to how bad its effects are, and The Blackest Night for how much MP it costs that you might as well dump that MP on Edge/Flood of Darkness/Shadow).

You can have balance on the DPS output and it has to be minuscule enough to not matter unless you have people complaining about how boring looking or poorly designed certain abilities(or BOTH at the same time like Living Shadow despite it being too flashy for a DoT that also does 3 AoEs where you are better off giving Abyssal Drain /Carve and Spit 2 charges, PLD Goring Blade is a DoT that's also flashy enough, lasts just as long but doesn't do as much damage unless you're trying to maintain it which will do more damage than Living Shadow in single target in the long term) where you might as well have a burst combo like RDM or GNB as that seems to be well designed, which is the path PLD seems to be going granted you would need to make each burst combo feel VERY different outside of numbers by adding an additional effect of some kind.

End game currently has 4 level brackets being 50, 60, 70, and 80 but what is the point of half of the end game content if it's going to be boring because half of your skills are locked behind the other half the end game content(unless you play healers then you probably wouldn't notice the difference between a level 50 and 80 endgame raid outside of "what happened to half of my- oh right level sync") which then becomes pointless to begin with because you can into older content unsynced once you hit current level cap and figure out how much of the bosses mechanics are still BS because you can't solo the entire fight.

And now for some questions that I want to ask that I also want to give my thoughts and opinion on

Do we need a level squish?

Do we need a basically the full end game toolkit available as early as level 50, or do we need it spread out over the course of each expansion until a level squish needs to happen to fix the balancing problems that were introduced going into Stormblood that was magnified in Shadowbringers?

Do all classes/jobs need to look and feel different within a specific role, or do they just need the bare minimum?

In regards to level squish; NO!

In regards to full end game toolkit; at least level 50, level 60 at most.

In regards classes/jobs feeling different within the role they are given; YES! YES! A THOUSAND TIMES YES! They need to feel different enough to fill the role while providing something that fits their class/job identity, whether it be through their DPS rotation, defensive cooldowns, or both, and if they are going to have a Fire IV spam AT LEAST CHANGE THE ANIMATION PAST THE FIRST USE!