A potential rework to the level-sync system.

[Daeriion_Aeradiir]

TEM CAN NOT ONE SHOT A LVL 15 BOSS WITH AUTO ATTACKS.[/B]
Now imagine what will happen when instead of the 53 damage Nexus weapon we have the 13 damage it would be synced down

I really think people are severely overthinking how powerful we are and how limiting weapon damage really is.

Weapon damage is irrelevant. Potency is the only value you need to look at to see how much damage two characters would deal when comparing rotations.

Let's take a look at WAR. We have a level 30 WAR & a level 80 WAR. We'll both give them all level 1 gear & level 1 weapon so when inside, their stats are almost identical and weapon damage between them is the same, so the only thing that matters is potency and nothing else.

Billy the level 30 WAR rushes in, pops berserk, does 5x overpower, plus 4x normal Overpower outside of berserk for good measure. Just for simplification, we'll make crits do 1.5x damage for damage.
Billy does (130 * 1.5(crit) * 1.2(DH)) = 234 potency for each of his initial 5 overpowers in Berserk, for a total of 1170 potency. his extra 4 overpowers bump it up to 1690 potency. Not bad Billy.

Chad the level 80 WAR rolls in and has 100 beast Gauge, 2x Infuriates and IR ready. He rolls in and pops IR, followed by 5x Decimate. He does (250 * 1.5 * 1.2) = 450 potency per hit. With his 5 decimates, he does 2250 damage. Already nearly 1.5 times as much damage as Billy did. But we're not even done yet.

During that IR, Chad got to use a free upheaval (450 potency) & Onslaught (100), meaning Chad has now done 2800 potency total, now closing in on nearly 2x as much as Billy. Chad does 2x more Decimate to drain his 100 beast gauge, adding another 500 potency, now up to 3300 potency. Chad now finally whips out his 2x Infuriates, doing 2x Chaotic cyclones. (400 * 1.5 * 1.2) = 720 potency, or 1440 potency total. Meaning Chad has now done 4740 potency, or nearly 3x as much damage as Billy.

But wait! Chad also has Storm's eye, giving him a 10% damage boost! meaning he actually has done more than 3x as much damage than Billy, at 5214 potency. He did over 3x as much damage as Billy in the same 9 GCDs as Billy, and this is only on AoE (Spoiler alert: Chad is doing over 5x as much damage as Billy between Fell Cleave & Inner Chaos on single target). We haven't even talked about the fact that while Billy is bleeding out from damage over there, Chad is popping his Nascent Flash to completely laugh at his enemy's attempts to hurt him by life-stealing himself to full HP from just a single decimate!

Even outside of burst, Chad can do nearly 4x overpower's worth of damage every 30s compared to Billy from Upheaval. Chad can also do 70 more potency every 2 GCDs, and every 4-6 can do 2x Overpower damage in the form of Decimate! Which not only deals more damage, but also reduces his Infuriate Cooldown closer to Wreck Billy's damage harder when he can use more Chaotic Cyclones! And what does Billy have to answer to Chad? nothing.

I think you don't understand that weapon damage will do nothing. Given equal gear to nullify weapon damage out of the equation, a level 80 will still be doing several times more damage than a level 30 could ever possibly do. This is also just for Warrior, a job that is largely GCD bound. I actually tried NIN first but that was getting so hilarious at how hard a level 80 NIN was curbstomping a level 30 one that I switched to Warrior as a more tame example.

I also enjoy how you brought up a slippery slope earlier when you're the one talking about how we should just completely blow out balance just because newer jobs weren't as properly tuned to low levels as they should have been. The solution is to fix those jobs at lower levels, not let every job do the same.

Level Sync will never change. It's been brought up countless times in the past, the devs have mentioned it in liveletters why they keep it as it is. it's to maintain parity between a level capped character of a job and a low level character of the same job. When the current system is future proofed for every expansion to come, requires zero tweaking of potency, %s, etc to work, and does a dang good job at keeping two characters of differing levels in a job to maintain parity, why would they ever spend even a nanosecond designing a new system? "Don't fix whats not broken."

As far as your worries, the roulettes already provide the highest exp-time ratio the game offers. and if by some unholy miracle people decide leveling roulette isn't giving enough and mass exodus? They'll just crank the rewards up ala MSQ roulette. Put on your favorite streaming service, kick back and relax with your 2 button rotation, or simply avoid roulettes altogether.

[Tlachtga]

And what does Billy have to answer to Chad? nothing.

Billy could play the game, level to 80 and have the same skills as Chad in about 2 weeks, playing very casually. that's his answer. if Billy wants instant gratification...well he can go buy a jump potion.

also, it literally wouldn't matter that a lvl80 tank is way better than a lvl30 one, because you can only have 1 tank in a dungeon unless its a fixed party. do y'all even play this game?

even if Naruto the lvl80 NIN is completely dumpstering Desmond the lvl24 Rogue....this is a co-operative game. who cares if one person is doing way more dps? firstly, lazy players exist, so this no doubt already happens in the current system, and anyway you can't even see the numbers without ACT, a 3rd party tool that's against ToS.

most casual players either don't care about their dps, or actively dislike the idea of people being able to see it with ACT. and even people who do use ACT don't run it in dungeons for the most part.

its honestly baffling there's even resistance to the idea of keeping skills, even compromises, such as giving complete skill sets at lvl50. its really the best of both worlds.

it'll preserve that special challenge of Sastasha that's apparently so important while at the same time, open up a lot of old lvl 50 content to more than "semi-afk for 15 mins while i get 60% of a level up" especially since SE loves to reuse it.

these weak balance excuses (stop comparing two of the same support lmao), or the idea that newbies would be sad that someone who has played the game longer than them has access to stronger skills...like that's how these types of games work bro.

or how it would lead to people being carried and not knowing how to play their job, as if lvl80 content is full of highly skilled players and not full already of people who don't have a clue how to play their job. i still constantly see freecure fishers in expert.

this is only going to get worse as the game gets more expansions, since they're committed to keeping the same or very similar amount of skills on jobs for the controller players. considering how badly they went about it with Shadowbringers...

[Vahlnir]

this is only going to get worse as the game gets more expansions, since they're committed to keeping the same or very similar amount of skills on jobs for the controller players. considering how badly they went about it with Shadowbringers...

Define "badly". I leveled every job to 80 and never had an issue with my bars. Did I understand what all the buttons did? Probably not. But I had no issue arranging/rearranging them all on 2 hotbars with a controller. At most I had to toggle a 3rd for things like Arm's Length or a tank stance, but that only took up another 3-4 slots. It's perfectly fine as is for controller players. People just need to know how to set things up correctly. I don't really see how they handled it badly.

[Penthea]

also, it literally wouldn't matter that a lvl80 tank is way better than a lvl30 one, because you can only have 1 tank in a dungeon unless its a fixed party. do y'all even play this game?

Considering you don't get a whole lot from 30 to 50 yes it does matter a lot. And at lvl 50 you start doing 8 man content. Do you play this game?

[Awha]

Personally as a player I already feel useless when I end up in a newbie dungeon when my co dps has AoE and we do large pulls. I would feel even worse if the players had their full rotation while I am stuck with my basic combo. I want to feel like I am offering something and not have it feel like my presence amounts to nothing.

I probably would not stick around if that was the case.

[Tlachtga]

Define "badly". I leveled every job to 80 and never had an issue with my bars. Did I understand what all the buttons did? Probably not. But I had no issue arranging/rearranging them all on 2 hotbars with a controller. At most I had to toggle a 3rd for things like Arm's Length or a tank stance, but that only took up another 3-4 slots. It's perfectly fine as is for controller players. People just need to know how to set things up correctly. I don't really see how they handled it badly.

the number of skills isn't the problem, the distribution is. they remove or rework skills to make way for new ones, and it seems like they only take into account how the jobs feel at cap.

some jobs feel incredibly broken when synced. and since SE seemingly needs to add new skills to every job....it could definitely be shuffled better. even now, WHM doesn't get Rapture til 76 but gets Solace at 52. Thin Air at 56, which is extremely niche in its use. Simply swapping the levels Rapture unlocks with Thin Air would go a long way. Something similar could be done with DRKs Stalwart Soul. I have no idea why that's lvl72 unlock. it really shouldn't be. don't get me started on how melee don't get spammable aoe gcds til lvl40ish.

Considering you don't get a whole lot from 30 to 50 yes it does matter a lot. And at lvl 50 you start doing 8 man content. Do you play this game?

obviously not, i jump on here to have discussions over issues with a game i don't play /s

don't get a whole lot of what? skills? that could change. that was the proposal in fact.

anyway, once again. its a cooperative game. it ultimately doesn't matter if one member of the team is outperforming the other. this already happens with the current system.

often i see people across social media all admit to having netflix on, or doing chores during this 50 content. so why does balance matter in this content, when the majority isn't even fully engaged in it?

[ItMe]

One of the benefits to the current level synch system I think people overlook, is that it provides new players examples of what classes play like at their level. And this really only hit me because I have 2 friends who just picked up the game.

One of them was a WHM. In dungeons they would do little beyond heal spam, but in open world content they would use repose, stone, repose, stone, repose, etc. to keep themself safe.
That is... until they got into a FATE with another WHM, saw how they were playing the class, and went "OH!"

My other friend was a SMN who was constantly overapplying their dots... until they were in a duty with another SMN and saw how the more experience player was playing.

If the other SMN or WHM had their full kit (or even more of it) theres no way my pals, still trying to learn the low level stuff, would have been able to see what those players were doing and understand it, let alone learn anything from it.

And considering they've both made it through ARR, who knows how long they would have been stumbling along like this before it started causing problems.

[xbahax92]

I dont understand why people think a new player is getting overwhelmed about a simple 1-2 rotation in a low level dungeon. Like the gcd is super long for most players and combat isnt as engaging early on. I think the low level dungeons give wrong impression about whats to come late game. Low level dungeons are rather a scare off than a lure in.

[linayar]

They used to exist. That's the point. And will come back if people stop queuing into the roulettes.

They still exist, but not common even for DPS, of which I play a lot of, and I've gotten 30+ minutes on tank queues (depending on queue type) as well.

At the very least, they haven't been common in each of the three NA data centers since January of 2017 when I first started playing this game. And the level sync has worked the same way since then, so it's not a certainty that 30+ minutes of queues would be more common if they don't change the way level sync works.

I dont understand why people think a new player is getting overwhelmed about a simple 1-2 rotation in a low level dungeon. Like the gcd is super long for most players and combat isnt as engaging early on. I think the low level dungeons give wrong impression about whats to come late game. Low level dungeons are rather a scare off than a lure in.

I personally don't think it's about being overwhelmed, otherwise SE would start all new jobs at level 1.

Rather, I think it's about a sense of progression. They have to space it out or you'd run the risk of going through an entire expansion without a change to your available abilities.

[ItMe]

I dont understand why people think a new player is getting overwhelmed about a simple 1-2 rotation in a low level dungeon.

I'm not sure "overwhelmed" is the most accurate word.
FF14's combat is somewhat unique among MMOs and very unique compared to other FF games, so the desire to take things slow so new players can adjust is def understandable.