Focus on fixing jobs for the people who already play them

[Jirah]

Okay, we all know flamethrower is the ugly step child that no one uses except to RP burning forests down. It probably wouldn't hurt to have it do more damage considering it doesn't really buff party damage. However I do like the current iteration of machinist since I can learn a simple rotation and go between jobs to keep my life interesting. The game shouldn't be about being stuck in one job because it requires all the energy in the world to run right, and that seems to be what people are actually advocating 90% of the time on the forums.

No range should be THIS simple don’t mind a melee getting easier due to their ties to positional but with MCH, this proves duming down jobs works. What’s next SAM? SMN? NIN? even 4.0 didn’t “require all the energy in the world to run right” literally no job is like this and people constantly ask for jobs to be easier like SMN, MNK and BRD which is what I’ve seen more of than whatver your talking about

[OdinelStarrei]

Do people really want to go back to spam-weaving Dark Arts?

Just because you need to replace the bathwater, doesn't mean you throw out the entire bathroom as a result.

Maybe if SE didn't remove Darkside drain, while also giving significantly higher MP per minute via abilities, AND adding DA to Syphon Strike, DA spam wouldn't have existed. TBN was supposed to alleviate this I guess, but again, people couldn't use it properly back then either, despite it becoming DPS neutral, or even a gain if used to move GCDs around. Edge spam is the exact same as DA spam, it's just better implemented for people cannot manage MP, because they removed everything that gave MP. DRK openers right now have 13 oGCD weaves, many of them double weaved. You are still spamming, you just deal with absolutely braindead gameplay outside those windows, because people couldn't resist mashing DA.

So because people didn't like DA, and instead of tweaking it, by say, making Dark Passenger a high MP use, DPS gain in single target for more MP dumps, making DA more expensive like how Edge is RIGHT NOW, and actually balancing DRK MP assuming they weren't in Grit 24/7, let's delete Dark Arts, let's delete almost all kit interactivity, let's keep the DRK standalone DoT deleted, even though GNB got one, let's remove both Blood Price and haste speed up from Blood Weapon, simplify the Blood gauge, delete the ability to use more than one TBN per minute without being an ADPS detriment, let's delete the entire AoE gameplay loop AND make your 123 so boring, that even ROG has a more in-depth GCD rotation at level 26.

So now that all those things are gone or reworked so extensively they no longer resemble HW OR SB DRK, what are we getting in exchange?

A DoT you can't influence in LS, a damage buff that you would have to be AFK to drop, passive MP gain so you have to think about MP even less, and a copied raidwide mitigation you can't even use in Level 70 content (but GNB can). But TBN is good!!!

Yeah, I'll take DA spam over this. At least my job made sense back then.

[Jirah]

Damn, I'm really happy that many starts to speak about the job design.

I personally prefer the 5.0 direction of MCH, 4.0 MCH had too many problem.
I like how the job went from gunplay and gadget to actual machines and "bigger guns". But that's all the rework brought to MCH. The rotation is barebone and boring, way too many abilities are automated. Wildfire combo is no more, it's just an empowered Hypercharge phase. Flamethrower is press and wait. Automaton Queen is a glorified dot tied to a gauge. And all gauge are "fill to X and spend with Y ability". Don't have tools? Cycle 1 2 3.
SB MCH was annoying but it had results. ShB MCH is boring and is a terrible addition to a team.

Back in HW there was button bloat, in ShB it's a button starving.
Spamming a GCD 5 times in a row is not fun. More than 3 buttons with AoE variant is not fun.

I told myself that if MCH was in this boring state once again, I'd go Sage for the expansion but I got quickly reminded about the state of healers!
Job design needs love. And we really need informations about the job direction, not at the reveal when it's too late.

I knew I’d find you here haha, once again I’ll disagree on the direction was beneficial. MCH losing 10+ skills for the sake of accessibility with the most boring rotation in the game, the most boring kit in the game, the most fat with the least amount of skills, cutting all its support and turret actions for no particular reason with no replacements was a terrible move.

Reading this thread depressing me because I honestly believe fixing 4.0 would’ve resulted in a better job than 5.0. And I can’t begin to argue the massive amount of misconceptions of people overhating on a job that inevitable had to be compared with the behemoth that was 4.0 BRD and how the forums very commonly blow everything out of proportion, including MCH popularity. The most undeserved of all the jobs and will very likely stagnate in EW

[AngeliouxRein]

This is exactly what I fear the most with SMN… people keep trying to act like there’s epic issues or say it’s clunky. SMN doesn’t need to be dumb downed to 123 combos. Not every job needs to be this dang simple. It’s literally just smash buttons for those who want it simple and then for the rest of us it still leaves room for creativity to weave skills in at different times. If you don’t like SMN just don’t freakin play it. I don’t need another heart break like they did SCH and AST….

[Jirah]

Am I weird because I disagree? I enjoy Dancer and Machinist the most (I'm a DNC main on my main character). Bard is fun (especially at 80) but feels a bit clunky compared to the other 2. However, I started playing at the end of 2019 so I have no idea what they were like before ShB.

BRD lost some of its support and despite a few nitpicks remains the same. The clunky ness is due to apex arrow bad design, and how poorly paced the job, and how rare stacks are to get before Stormblood content

Since MCH is fundemantlly dense and DNC is still young, BRD is the only Ranged job that has a disciplined kit with no filler and if it gets simplified to please MCH mains that just like spamming buttons in no order or agenda the role will turn shallow and stale

[Roeshel]

We're advocating that every job should take some level of thought to play. If you can switch between every job with little effort, turn your brain off, and expect close to top end play, that's not good design. We want jobs to be play differently...

What do you mean top end play? Even if you switch between healer jobs, which are homogenised quite a bit, in savage you won't be performing as good as your first healer class until you get some practice. At least that's how it was for me when I tried playing sch or ast. Even though all healers have one attack spell and one dot it's still complicated to execute things perfectly when you are starting out and IMO all healers heal differently right now. AST can heal constantly in between malefic casts, a very consistent healer, the best one I think. SCH has to maintain broil spam until they need to use ogcd and then they use Ruin II to weave heals and/or move. And then you have WHM, the only class which suffers dps loss from trying to heal. Healing gets in the way of being efficient in terms of dps so I'd say whm is more closely related to rdm than to ast and sch. Joke aside, you can't turn your brain off and expect close to top end play. There is some level of thought in the jobs, I don't know how it was before but right now there is.

[TheMightyMollusk]

BRD lost some of its support and despite a few nitpicks remains the same. The clunky ness is due to apex arrow bad design, and how poorly paced the job, and how rare stacks are to get before Stormblood content

Since MCH is fundemantlly dense and DNC is still young, BRD is the only Ranged job that has a disciplined kit with no filler and if it gets simplified to please MCH mains that just like spamming buttons in no order or agenda the role will turn shallow and stale

The very disciplined kit of spamming Heavy/Burst Shot while waiting for something else to proc from dots. Unless you're in Army's Paeon, where nothing actually procs and you're just spamming. Or unless you're doing AOE, then you spam Quick Nock and not much else because Bard has no efficient way to spread their dots across multiple targets.

[Powercow]

Monk has less mechanics of note and fewer things to consider now than in ARR, which is just weird.

-Monk autoattacks, well everyones' autoattacks, used to be a tight fontal cone only. This led to issues with server sync figuring out which way you were facing while moving, and was changed to autoattacks being 360 degrees for everyone. A fine change to solve a technical issue.

-Monk positionals used to be extremely punishing and was the focus of your entire gameplay back in ARR and HW. Abilities would sometimes do half-again to almost double damage if you landed the positional, so you tried *REAL HARD* to land every single one. This led to risk-taking by juking in and out of dangerous areas, similar to how BLMs take risks to squeeze out one more cast before moving. Now with them being generally less punishing (except Leaden Bootshine, which is about as punishing as the average 2.0 positional) and the inclusion of 2 charges of True North and 3 charges of Riddle of Earth and some bosses just being omni-positional, this aspect is just... a non-issue for the most part.

-Monks, both in ARR but especially in Heavensward, actually had a semi-unique mechanic shared only with Summoner. They could spend more of their resource (TP in the case of Monk) to do more DPS, at the cost of running dry faster. It thematically kinda felt like "going all out" DBZ-style, leaving you exhausted afterwards. With the removal of TP, this mechanic has been entirely removed.

-Monk was the ramp-up class that, more than any other, had to be constantly aggressive. The name of the game was to attack-attack-attack and never let up with a relentless flurry of blows, lest you lost Greased Lightning. You'd have to try to greed out one more GCD, and in some cases you'd have to actually restrain yourself for just a moment or two to land a GL refresh before a boss mechanic, so you could hold onto it for after the boss comes back. After several buffs to GL's duration and not one, not two, not three, but *FOUR* abilities added to help maintain Greased Lightning that didn't involve actually being aggressive, they finally just removed the mechanic entirely.

-Monk has a free-flowing combo system that, in theory, could be really cool with varying speed buffs like Arrow or other short-duration haste increases. Sadly, Arrow was changed and no other haste boosts (for Monk) were ever added, meaning that unless you stack a ton of Skillspeed you have little in the way of adjusting your rotation mid-combat to gain more DPS. Added to this, Fracture and Touch of Death were both great ways of doing DPS while stalling out your rotation to not overlap buffs/debuffs/Demolish too early, or to hold off a GL refresh for a certain mechanic. In addition, the ability to mix-and-match allowed you to spend TP wisely by either using another AoE skill, or going with a single target GCD to save TP and keep the damage going. TP, Fracture and ToD were removed and the free-flowing combat system has since served no real purpose.

So what does Monk have left? Positionals. And those are a shadow of what they used to be. There's no more TP management, no more combo-switching, no more GL management... now it's just neutered positionals. And honestly I can almost see those being removed in EW for the sake of making Monk more "fun and accessible" to people, which leaves Monk with nothing at all. Well, I guess their big mechanic is their job meter is unique in that it is the only one to be both RNG-heavy AND prone to overcapping. And it even clashes with their job quest lore!

(Oh, and removing Steel Peak to give it back a couple patches later as Tornado Kick was annoying, but the sheer ballsiness of removing Howling Fist and giving it back in a less-useful and more restrictive form in Enlightenment *IN THE SAME PATCH* borders on parody. I mean, damn.)

[Jirah]

The very disciplined kit of spamming Heavy/Burst Shot while waiting for something else to proc from dots. Unless you're in Army's Paeon, where nothing actually procs and you're just spamming. Or unless you're doing AOE, then you spam Quick Nock and not much else because Bard has no efficient way to spread their dots across multiple targets.

Monitoring your dots, monitoring your song duration and it’s secondary effect, monitoring your CD, procs, and EA which is your free proc skill and monitoring your Soul Gage, and if it’s not on CD applying your utility like Minne, Troubadour, Battle voice and Paean. if all your doing is spamming one skill as you described in this comment, your doing it wrong.

I’d call it more engaging than DNC having just 1-2 with a chance of getting skills that isn’t guarantee every 15 seconds like BRD, or MCH just literally spamming a button 5 times then proceeds to spam 1-2-3 for the rest of the fight until it’s uneventful OGCD come up

[Jirah]

What do you mean top end play? Even if you switch between healer jobs, which are homogenised quite a bit, in savage you won't be performing as good as your first healer class until you get some practice. At least that's how it was for me when I tried playing sch or ast. Even though all healers have one attack spell and one dot it's still complicated to execute things perfectly when you are starting out and IMO all healers heal differently right now. AST can heal constantly in between malefic casts, a very consistent healer, the best one I think. SCH has to maintain broil spam until they need to use ogcd and then they use Ruin II to weave heals and/or move. And then you have WHM, the only class which suffers dps loss from trying to heal. Healing gets in the way of being efficient in terms of dps so I'd say whm is more closely related to rdm than to ast and sch. Joke aside, you can't turn your brain off and expect close to top end play. There is some level of thought in the jobs, I don't know how it was before but right now there is.

I think he was referring toward DPS, if you can buy a jump pot for any dps and go on lowpower mode and still perform very well somehow that’s a poorly designed job. And thus far I think only one job fits that bill, and perhaps more comming EW