Former WoW player: Suggested changes to FFXIV Raiding end-game

[Larirawiel]

Honestly, I think FFXIV can learn a lot from WoW regarding encounter design and class design.
From what I can tell, both classes and fights are very static, almost everything is designed around a boss doing a set rotation of mechanics then enraging. Almost all arenas are just a flat, symmetric shape...
Very few fights focus on environment interactions, space management, add management, reactivate game play etc.
Almost all classes seem to have a set rotation, minimal procs, zero item effects beyond flat stats.
Even utility: that seems to just mean "% number increases".
There are minimal movement tools, minimal tools for moving and controlling adds, seemingly zero CC beyond role actions, zero kiting, zero off tanking...
I was blown away that BLMs ice magic has no CC, not even a slow attached to it.

Yes, that is a point i do not like in FF14. Every class/job in FF14 is basically a rotation + an own optical style and nothing more.

But if you want harder content and this content should be done with smaller groups of players then it is the price you have to pay. If you want harder content and small groups and uniqueness for the classes/jobs then the players will create a meta. If you do not fit into that meta then you're out. This happened already in TBC when they introduced heroic instances. Classes without good CC abilities had a very hard time because most groups avoided them because classes with good CC were way more useful. I can remember that people wanted three mages for Magister's Terrace because Priestess Delrissa with their four adds was very hard without CC or total overgeared players.


Class uniqueness worked in WoW vanilla most of the time because the only hard content were 40 man raids. And this is not small group content anymore.



Cheers