The unrewarding state of physical ranged

[Payotz]

I read your stuff, imagine i´ve even liked your "click me" post after it showed up. But i´m trying to get what might be SE´s big plan.

I've seen an interview in Famitsu(that I can't actually find the source now due to me being in the workplace) that the endgoals is to have a "Second Life"-esque game where the player can actually pick up and play the game, and that it will have no drastic changes so that a player who's quit now can return 2 years from now and still play the game. They strive to have every job be playable and be able to clear content. I honestly don't like this plan at all(besides the every job being able to clear content part, to an extent, and I don't really know if their plan changed due to feedback or are they still bulldozing through it.

The issue is, that SE goes the easy way to balance the classes and obviously wants to offer any content for everyone. They don´t go for much unique and different gameplay anymore. They force the classes into specific roles and those roles play pretty much similar to each other. Tanks got pretty much all the same. Healer work pretty much the same. Range work pretty much the same, especially BRD/DNC. Melees work the same next to MNK positionals and NIN´s ninjutsu. Only casters are not THAT similar to each other thx to BLM design and RDM range/melee combos. Do you agree on that or do you see that big of a difference i don´t?

I do and the same time I don't. It's all in a case-by-case basis. The feeling that jobs under some of the roles feeling like they're the same is definitely there despite some minute differences among them.

Tank design, yes. They're all pretty much the same. The only thing that's different is GNB due to their core rotation.

Healers, yes. Despite the different mechanics of each healer, the very fact that SCH and AST is changed to a simpler versions of themselves is bleh. Most of them feel like a WHM + mechanic. WHM + Xenoglossy, WHM + cards, WHM + ghosting issues. They definitely need to change this.

Ranged Physicals/Melees/Casters, honestly no. They still play distinctively different from each other, but as this is the ranged physical thread, I'll expand on what physical ranged.

* BRD puts dots on and cycles through songs. Their kit changes depending on what songs they play.
* DNC plays like old MCH. You get a burst window every Devilment/Flourish window that you juggle procs into. Even the old 50/50 GCD proc is in there and tuned up to 11. It's not as fun as old MCH, but it definitely has its spirit.
* MCH is zzz

That's why I tend to focus on physical ranged problems as a role. I think the core rotation can and should be expanded upon, but their issues as a role overshadow the core rotation issues by a mile.

It doesn´t make sense to come up with raids which force that any specific class has some extra mechanics if you just look at what will come and what we already have.

Not specific class. Specific ROLE.
I'm not advocating for only a MCH to handle mechanics.
I'm not advocating for only a DNC to handle mechanics.
I'm not advocating for only a BRD to handle mechanics.

I'm advocating for all Physical Ranged to be given extra responsibility, like how it was back then.

This is like refuting that healers need more damage to heal. They do, and E11S is an example of a heal intensive fight.
This is like refuting that tanks need to reposition the boss. They do, and the tier doesn't have the boss teleport to the middle as much compared to Verse.
These are all scenarios where they made changes to their raid design to accomodate roles. So the precedent is already there.

They want it to be easy, static and strictly according to their own plan.

And adding more mechanics that the physical ranged can handle is a hell of a lot easier than making sure that raids are designed so there's one tiny spot for ranged physical to execute their 15 yalm max potency GCD.

I would have like 100 idea´s to make use of the mobility of phys. range., to force the OT to be more useful than eating one TB, to go away from DPS healers to actual heal-healers, and so on. I´m fully on your side with the stuff you requested, but sadly SE is ignorant or just want to cater more players in case for more business, otherwise we wouldn´t sit here and writing about such stuff.

All we can really do is make our voices heard. I disagree on a lot of your proposed ideas (DPS healers to actual heal-healers), but all we can really do is make our voices heard and talk about things.
On that point though, I hope you now understand why I prefer raid mechanics a lot more than ranged limits on GCDs and OGCDs.

[ssunny2008]

Not specific class. Specific ROLE.

Well yeah i should´ve written "class or role based", bad formulated.

The thing is, if we just look at the content from last year, there is nothing like that and i can´t believe that SE will change their mind. They want to force the said build of a raid-team, but that´s it imo. It would be another thing if you NEED those big shields to survive mechanic X, to have that kiting or baiting OT / phys. range dps in several mechanics, not just once in 12 fights for a short window. It has become pretty primitive and predictable.
E11/E12s are a good step in the healing direction, but if we have a look at E11s, you can still perform a good rotation. Cycles are the only real badass mechanic there and SE is even so smart to place prismatic right in front of it, just for the case any healer could be oom or without cd´s. As long as noone is dieing you don´t even need your class-stat, just hold MP reg on cd.
I can´t see much difference with the boss positions either. They do port back into the middle for the big mechanics. The only exception might be the dog in E10s when he switches his form.

It might be not a thing for you, but the phys. range play all very similar to me, just because i´ve the range, the mobility and can do whatever i want, when i want. That one is more dot/procc related and the other has burst, doesn´t make the difference in kind of "how does a class feel to play".

Imo i can´t trust in SE to return from their strict boss pattern and those stack/spread mechanics with RNG safezones. Don´t get me wrong, some are really good made and well presentated, but there are no real mechanics anymore which put the players under pressure or are made for specific roles. Overall damage has become to much of a factor than everything else.

On that point though, I hope you now understand why I prefer raid mechanics a lot more than ranged limits on GCDs and OGCDs.

Of course i do, the thing with raids and their mechanics was the first thing i talked about when this thread started. But away from this, i personally would like to see way more depth and unique stuff on them. Imo they´re way to boring and to similar to play for me. I love the base idea from bard, but it got nothing but flat raid damage and a cleanse you´ll never need.

[Payotz]

Of course i do, the thing with raids and their mechanics was the first thing i talked about when this thread started. But away from this, i personally would like to see way more depth and unique stuff on them. Imo they´re way to boring and to similar to play for me. I love the base idea from bard, but it got nothing but flat raid damage and a cleanse you´ll never need

At least we've come to an understanding on that part, and yeah the role definitely needs more depth job wise, which is why I think utility is the best on this front.

The thing is, if we just look at the content from last year, there is nothing like that and i can´t believe that SE will change their mind. They want to force the said build of a raid-team, but that´s it imo. It would be another thing if you NEED those big shields to survive mechanic X, to have that kiting or baiting OT / phys. range dps in several mechanics, not just once in 12 fights for a short window. It has become pretty primitive and predictable.

Imo i can´t trust in SE to return from their strict boss pattern and those stack/spread mechanics with RNG safezones. Don´t get me wrong, some are really good made and well presentated, but there are no real mechanics anymore which put the players under pressure or are made for specific roles. Overall damage has become to much of a factor than everything else.

Honestly, I was kinda of the same mentality when I raided this tier. I was kinda put off by this tier in particular because it's just nothing but Protean Waves on top of Protean Waves on top of more Protean Waves.
Until I actually took a look at casual content; The 24 mans, the Extremes and Delubrum. Specifically Delubrum.

There's honestly a LOT of creativty in those mechanics even though they don't hit as hard as Savage. It just seems that without any meta limits at all, they're more than capable of thinking of mechanics that are actually more creative than Savage. Hot/Cold, the Chess board mechanics in the last boss, Ghost boss has potential as a base mechanic in future content. Even thinking back to launch, Innocence EX is actually a really creative and high tempo fight that's really unique among all fights in this expansion. The whole fight's just a massive melting pot of personal responsibility and "Oh shit move fast" type of gameplay that it's just ridiculously fun despite the very low dps check.

So I'm really optimistic that the raid team can pull it off. I have more faith in the raid design team a lot more than the job design team in fact.
If anything, I'm slowly appreciating Bozja and slowly realizing that Bozja is where the raid team can actually experiment with a lot of mechanics without affecting the raid scene.

[ssunny2008]

snip

I don´t think it lacks of creativity. It´s more like they put more stuff into those alliance raids, because you´ve a big amount of players and no enrage mechanics. You can´t force perfectly timed mechanics and dps from a bunch of random players who comes together via finder. You don´t even need a decent strategy or uptime, you just play it down. Such stuff would not work in savage and that´s why SE probably focuses more on precise and static gameplay in such raids. And overall it´s still "once seen and it´s going to be easy". (The endboss in castrum might be a good example atleast for needed dps. But as we see, too many ppl still failing to beat the beastmaster. But hey, it´s a mechanic where the players decide who´s going to do that, not the RNG.)

They should get ride of their pattern "aoe-mechanic-tb-aoe-mechanic-tb etc..." and design every boss from ground up different. More double / triple bosses or boss + add and not just an addphase would be welcome too.

They should nerf / rework a bunch of tools of all classes. TB are a perfect example. You invul them up to 3 times per fight, maybe even 4. The dog is the only one where a real tankswap is needed thx to the debuffs. The TB´s in E12s force a lot of defs, but nothing is coming after that. No hardhitting boss, no def-rotation, no permanent tank swaps every minute to assist the healer, nothing. It´s just not needed. I play WAR on another char and it´s like "Don´t worry healer, i´m going to invul and healing myself after the TB!". Or you´ve PLD who easily use his invul to eat every mechanic without any damage debuff. On top of that, each defs on tanks became pretty much the same. I would like to see someone coming up like "Let DRK taking this tankbuster, it´s magical damage!"

Bard has a cleanse, but for what? Debuffs has become so rare and it has only a one time use. You can´t really assist the healer with it.

Ranges has a silence, why does tanks have a silence? They made use of double silence in E8s addphase, but that´s it. It´s actually probably one of the better mechanics since it was a dps check and you needed those stuns and silent abilites.

Limit break is a cool thing, but heal LB3 is just broken and saves more than enough runs which should´ve ended at some point. I´ve done like 100 E6s runs and only like 5 of them were clean. The most went down at the last mechanic with the DD tethers, but np, one heal survived, gg! Tank LB3 is pretty much non existent unless fights like alex or WoL force its one time use for whatever reason. DD LB3 is fine if you miss that 1% damage, but it´s getting useless pretty fast and destroys the rotation of the DPS pretty much.

And the list goes on. We´ve too much tools which are not forced to be used often enough or too strong tools which gets pretty much abused to play around a handful of mechanics or issues a class could have without a decent build. The rest are some medigation tools to survive big aoe´s, which are always at the same point in the fight. Here again, once seen, press the button.

EDIT: Btw i would like to see stuff like castrum as 8-man savage content. To play a complete dungeon with 4-5 bosses, some hardhitting trashgroups, puzzles and no timer would bring more enjoyment than the current system to me.

[Rika007]

lets be honest SB and SHB BRD are pretty identical they lost MP/TP support and Foes and play somewhat the same, it is only the least played because DNC is brand new and MCH is essentially not recognized from SB MCH and is the safest non threatening job in the game with zero real concerns. Hard to compete with that

Nothing about that statement is honest, SB and SHB Bard are only alike in the core base rotation being the same. Outside of that SHB is a vastly inferior job due to the many passive trait changes they implemented, causing far more frustrations in things like just basic gameplay, on top of all the changes made to the support kit.

-Procs no longer being based on Crit means that the ramp up we felt later on in the expansion where Repertoire happened far more often due to higher crit ratios is now gone. That removes the really fun feeling of having those insane 3 or 4 full powered pitch perfects within raging strikes, or the high level play of judging when it was smarter to use two stacks to avoid an overcap. This turned what was once a heavy burst job into a more sustained damage job, as Bard now has one of the lowest bursts in the game when it used to be one of the highest in Stormblood.

-The straight shot buff now proc'ing on Iron Jaws creates more damage bleed as you can overwrite refulgent procs due to conflicts that arise from needing to reapply Iron Jaws.

-The implementation of Apex Arrow and the Soul Gauge causes another wrench in the rotation causing frustration, as one, it is your second hardest hitting ability that can't be relied upon to show up during your raging strikes burst window. And two, is another GCD that is pushed into your main rotation that you want to use as soon as it hits 100%, but also can cause conflicts if it hits 100 right when you need to reapply Iron Jaws. Also it's another AOE aim dependent move which is just not fun or satisfying to players to use... but that is diverging from the topic.

-The addition of the Army's Muse trait causes anyone without good ping to run into clipping issues while attempting to double weave whenever they leave Army's Paeon and goes into Army's Minuet.

The only outright positive changes that came about to the rotation was the addition of Barrage, proc'ing refulgent. Anything else was a negative.

As for the Support loss you are massively underplaying the other things that Bard loss. TP support is the only thing no ones crying about losing. Any good Bard worth their salt also enjoyed the mini-game of planning out refresh uses to insure they got the most use out of Foe's Requiem to line up with raid window buffs. Trobadour being something that was dependent upon which song you used was another skill expression moment, as it required fight knowledge, although I understand some may prefer the new way. Nature's minne may have been buffed in power, but it was also doubled in cool down, which means less uses overall. Which combined with the gutting of palisade, left anyone who enjoyed using it in raid settings to help deal with auto attack damage when all major healer and tank cooldowns have been blown (after Hello World 2 in A12s being my favorite part). That's a whole lot of interactive support Bard lost that good Bard players did take advantage of and use, that was replaced with nothing.

Add all that in with the obscenely low damage output, and nah I can't in anyway say it's honest to state that SB and SHB Bard still play the same. SHB Bard is just the remaining bones of what was once a near perfect job. The meat and soul of what made it great are gone. Dancer and the MCH rework coming in may have led to a few leaving, but that doesn't add up to what was legitimately the most played DPS job at all levels of play suddenly becoming the second lowest of all jobs, with only Monk being lower.

[Payotz]

I don´t think it lacks of creativity. It´s more like they put more stuff into those alliance raids, because you´ve a big amount of players and no enrage mechanics. You can´t force perfectly timed mechanics and dps from a bunch of random players who comes together via finder. You don´t even need a decent strategy or uptime, you just play it down. Such stuff would not work in savage and that´s why SE probably focuses more on precise and static gameplay in such raids. And overall it´s still "once seen and it´s going to be easy". (The endboss in castrum might be a good example atleast for needed dps. But as we see, too many ppl still failing to beat the beastmaster. But hey, it´s a mechanic where the players decide who´s going to do that, not the RNG.)

This tier's mechanics have been stale, and the only interesting mechanic that had potential (E12 Primals) is just a simplified Chariot/Dynamo + Cardinals/Intercardinals. It's definitely a bad thing when a static just instinctively form clock group in a BLIND prog without seeing mechanics, due to how predictable the entire tier is.

The fact that Delub Savage exists means that there's precedent in having those mechs actually function in an environment like Savage. (I fully believe that Delub Savage is much MUCH harder than current Savage. It makes current Savage look like an EX in comparison). I fully believe that they should add those mechanics in Savage, and they honestly shouldn't be scared of the backlash LR had back when Verse was relevant. It was ass to pug, but looking back, it was honestly unforgettable as a mechanic. I want more of that mech rather than "Iron Chariot v356".

They should get ride of their pattern "aoe-mechanic-tb-aoe-mechanic-tb etc..." and design every boss from ground up different. More double / triple bosses or boss + add and not just an addphase would be welcome too.
They should nerf / rework a bunch of tools of all classes. TB are a perfect example. You invul them up to 3 times per fight, maybe even 4. The dog is the only one where a real tankswap is needed thx to the debuffs. The TB´s in E12s force a lot of defs, but nothing is coming after that. No hardhitting boss, no def-rotation, no permanent tank swaps every minute to assist the healer, nothing. It´s just not needed. I play WAR on another char and it´s like "Don´t worry healer, i´m going to invul and healing myself after the TB!". Or you´ve PLD who easily use his invul to eat every mechanic without any damage debuff. On top of that, each defs on tanks became pretty much the same. I would like to see someone coming up like "Let DRK taking this tankbuster, it´s magical damage!"

Like I said, this tier's been bleh in terms of raid mechanic creativity. Even Verse was a lot more creative than this tier. E8S blows mostly every fight in this tier out of the water. That's why I'm hoping that mechanics in other content like 24 mans, Delub and EX find its way into Savage.

Bard has a cleanse, but for what? Debuffs has become so rare and it has only a one time use. You can´t really assist the healer with it.
Ranges has a silence, why does tanks have a silence? They made use of double silence in E8s addphase, but that´s it. It´s actually probably one of the better mechanics since it was a dps check and you needed those stuns and silent abilites.

Yeah it sucks. Which is why I really want more raid mechanics that can be solved by a Physical Ranged. They have a lot of CC, why not have Physical Ranged use it on add phase. etc....
I sound like a broken record at this point.

Limit break is a cool thing, but heal LB3 is just broken and saves more than enough runs which should´ve ended at some point. I´ve done like 100 E6s runs and only like 5 of them were clean. The most went down at the last mechanic with the DD tethers, but np, one heal survived, gg! Tank LB3 is pretty much non existent unless fights like alex or WoL force its one time use for whatever reason. DD LB3 is fine if you miss that 1% damage, but it´s getting useless pretty fast and destroys the rotation of the DPS pretty much.

Honestly. We as a group abuse the living hell out of Tank LB3. I don't think it's an issue at all. It's another tool that people can use in all content (Hell I've even used Tank LB in a dungeon when the DPS is low), and removing it would just tear out another piece of this game. LB is fine as it is. If LB cheese was still a thing I would see it as broken(even though it actually took a lot of planning and execution to do), but right now it's fine.

And the list goes on. We´ve too much tools which are not forced to be used often enough or too strong tools which gets pretty much abused to play around a handful of mechanics or issues a class could have without a decent build. The rest are some medigation tools to survive big aoe´s, which are always at the same point in the fight. Here again, once seen, press the button.

Yeah I agree. We definitely need more mechanics that use tools. Add that to ranged physical's responsibilities. Give Ranged something to do lol.

EDIT: Btw i would like to see stuff like castrum as 8-man savage content. To play a complete dungeon with 4-5 bosses, some hardhitting trashgroups, puzzles and no timer would bring more enjoyment than the current system to me.

Castrum legit feels more like a raid to me than Savage. It's definitely a lot more interesting than the current system.
I don't really know if they'll bring it back though considering a lot of people hated going through trash that they pretty much got rid of it completely back in SB.

[Kabooa]

I don't really know if they'll bring it back though considering a lot of people hated going through trash that they pretty much got rid of it completely back in SB.

Trash without reward is basically pointless.

What's the point of having time filler mobs that have nothing to do with the encounter, either directly (Enemies grant a buff for example) or indirectly (Enemies drop a component used to craft something useful)?

Given the hard time limit players get to complete the instance, those enemies can stay gone. The novelty of their presence wears off quickly, even the more "interesting" fights.

[ssunny2008]

Trash without reward is basically pointless.

What's the point of having time filler mobs that have nothing to do with the encounter, either directly (Enemies grant a buff for example) or indirectly (Enemies drop a component used to craft something useful)?

Given the hard time limit players get to complete the instance, those enemies can stay gone. The novelty of their presence wears off quickly, even the more "interesting" fights.

Having just trash as you have as alex raids is pointless yeah, but it´s another thing if you´ve complete raids like you´ve in other games where you move from boss to boss and between them you might solve some puzzles or actually those puzzles are part of the next boss. Some stuff could grant an extra chest or while activating something you might be able to summon a bonus boss which is harder then the endboss of the raid. It would even be easier to split the endboss in its 2 phases and more advanced mechanics + double loot and all that WITHOUT a timer which would force you to play the first phase again and again. The overall atmosphere would be much better than this in and out jumping from boss to boss too. (And rewards are not the only thing some ppl playing for.)

[ssunny2008]

Yeah I agree. We definitely need more mechanics that use tools. Add that to ranged physical's responsibilities. Give Ranged something to do lol.

I can just remember an add-boss of another game.

- A boss + 2 caster adds + damage adds + a heal add.
- The boss stacked a tankdebuff so tanks had to switch at X stacks. He set a mark on a random party member. In such cases the tank needed to taunt him, otherwise an aoe would´ve spread through the whole group. The correct use of only 3 defs were very important.
- For the adds you needed tons of damage. The current OT had to bind the damage adds until he had to take the boss. Ofc tanks had a single and a multi taunt for such situations. Healer needed to be focused down meanwhile you had to split in 2 groups to interrupt the casters, because their cast was a raidwide dot which was like insta-wipe. If someone used interruption, the caster wasn´t able to cast again for some seconds and if the same player would´ve used the interruption again, he died. So you needed a rotation, even the tanks had to interupt them and melees couldn´t even use a dash, because it did the same as the interupt skill but the add was able to cast instant again.
- On top of that you had some random aoes or grenades on different players so even the healer had to heal, heal, heal. Only 1 rezz per bossfight was a thing too.
- The last x% of the boss was a hard dps check to burst him down, because he had a softenrage with permanent raidwide damage which hurt harder with every tick.

I know it´s another game, but it made use of everything. Forced the players to go for priorities with any skills, denied even some "QoL" skills from melees. The tankstance wasn´t a hardlock on adds, you had to do damage and top DPS needed to use their aggro-reduce abilites. Random damage could happen anywhere, both tanks had a lot to do as much as the dps and healer. Nothing was so expectable like "aoe here, safezone there, oh 2nd phase addphase, etc." And that was just one boss from a bunch of others, but all of them were unique and in their own "environment". Some mechanics were based on the boss health, but you had way more possibilities to play and to adjust if you knew your class.

I really miss those stuff in FF14. Of course you had a plan, but next to that you had to react on a lot of income and things did even changed based on the classes you had in the raid. Tanks for example were very different in their core as much as healer. And even if someone died too early the group was able to finish the fight with enough dps and by pushing everything out of the classes what was actually possible. Once me and a heal did the last 5% as duo because the other 6 party members died in the last big mechanic. We used everything and switched with the boss aggro thx to the given tools on the classes. Such stuff is not possible here. If 1 players dies right before mechanic X, it´s a wipe. No matter how good the others are playing or decent the dps is. DD´s can´t even tank a boss for like 10s without getting two-shotted.

[Kabooa]

Having just trash as you have as alex raids is pointless yeah, but it´s another thing if you´ve complete raids like you´ve in other games where you move from boss to boss and between them you might solve some puzzles or actually those puzzles are part of the next boss. Some stuff could grant an extra chest or while activating something you might be able to summon a bonus boss which is harder then the endboss of the raid. It would even be easier to split the endboss in its 2 phases and more advanced mechanics + double loot and all that WITHOUT a timer which would force you to play the first phase again and again. The overall atmosphere would be much better than this in and out jumping from boss to boss too. (And rewards are not the only thing some ppl playing for.)

I've played those games. I reckon I've probably played more of them than most people on these forums, and for longer.

The trash gets tiresome. The puzzles are solved, so doing them again brings no enjoyment. The 15 minute trek from entrance to boss wears on you as you do it over and over.

There's only been one instance where this has been somewhat engaging in the past two decades I've been in the scene, and it was in Aion and Dark Poeta. (Oh, and it was a hard time limit there too, so not having a timer is irrelevant). Other examples in other games must obviously exist, but even I can't possibly play everything.

But by all means, go put together a team of synced 50 non-Blus and do Binding Coil every week.

Let me know how much enjoyment you get out of those atmospheric romps after the tenth time.