Patch 6.05 Notes

[ArkenaeuxBelmont]

Asking for jobs NOT to be balanced around the Savage tier makes no sense, because under that, in Dungeon/Normals/Alliance/Non-EX Trials, every job *can* and *does* do the job.

No one excludes certain jobs from that content because *every single job performs just fine*. The first rare exception to this is the current DRK, which is struggling in dungeons but not in raids. Dungeons ONLY.

Asking for all the jobs to be balanced around dungeon level content is asinine and completely counter productive to all your arguments of "X job is already hard". If the entire game/job balance was around dungeons, *you'd have to try even harder to perform in said dungeons to accomplish what you are doing now*.

How do people not understand this? Balancing around Savage makes the casual content for casuals *easier*. Not harder.

[Dewslam]

How do people not understand this? Balancing around Savage makes the casual content for casuals *easier*. Not harder.

Maybe the game shouldn't be so easy I can auto-attack through most of it with the only mildly challenging content being extreme and savage, which demands you jump through considerably more hoops than anything else just to do. But also Savage demands a different playstyle than the rest of the game, so balancing for it means balancing for the players who optimize and play as close to perfect as they can.

I think current monk is probably the best example of this; once you get the hang of blitz, its timers and the gist of what you're supposed to do, it's not hard to use at all and performs above how it feels like it is. But a lot of people struggle with keeping monk's blitz cycles going and fall out of synch which makes the class feel sloppy and awkward. So rather than rewarding you for performing well, it feels like you have to perform well for the class to not feel like a mess.

Basically, I guess, I'm saying that by tuning specifically for end game content it makes the rest of the game feel like it doesn't matter at all which, in turn, has made it all feel pretty dull and rote in comparison.

[Shurrikhan]

...

Job balancing =/= content tuning, unless your only solution to job imbalance is power creep or reduction to the lowest bar.

Parity, in itself, does not make content harder, easier, or anything in between.

But also Savage demands a different playstyle than the rest of the game, so balancing for it means balancing for the players who optimize and play as close to perfect as they can.

You say that like it's a bad thing. That's literally what it means to balance kits and the actual available throughput, rather than to add handicap points based on average player performance gap. The mistakes and value of mistakes people are likely to make vary wildly; to compensate for them only creates yet another mess of imbalance the moment those couple parts more of a given job is mastered.

I think current monk is probably the best example of this; once you get the hang of blitz, its timers and the gist of what you're supposed to do, it's not hard to use at all and performs above how it feels like it is. But a lot of people struggle with keeping monk's blitz cycles going and fall out of synch which makes the class feel sloppy and awkward.

It makes the job feel sloppy... to those who haven't yet learned how to play it. That is not a bad thing. Having a kit to learn is, in itself, available gameplay -- enjoyable hours of progress to be made if simply cares to learn rather than throwing up their hands and demanding the job be balanced around their mistakes or that its floor be raised nearly to its ceiling. I would much rather struggle with a 'harder' job and actually learn it than for there to be no mechanic on said job really worth mastering.

[ArkenaeuxBelmont]

Maybe the game shouldn't be so easy I can auto-attack through most of it with the only mildly challenging content being extreme and savage, which demands you jump through considerably more hoops than anything else just to do. But also Savage demands a different playstyle than the rest of the game, so balancing for it means balancing for the players who optimize and play as close to perfect as they can.

I think current monk is probably the best example of this; once you get the hang of blitz, its timers and the gist of what you're supposed to do, it's not hard to use at all and performs above how it feels like it is. But a lot of people struggle with keeping monk's blitz cycles going and fall out of synch which makes the class feel sloppy and awkward. So rather than rewarding you for performing well, it feels like you have to perform well for the class to not feel like a mess.

Basically, I guess, I'm saying that by tuning specifically for end game content it makes the rest of the game feel like it doesn't matter at all which, in turn, has made it all feel pretty dull and rote in comparison.

I'm not arguing the case to make the game easier.

I'm attempting to explain to people that have the viewpoint that "balancing a job's performance around their performance in savage" is somehow making the jobs "harder".

Believing that fact is a logical fallacy, because if a job is tiered to be balanced and perform well in savage, then it is going to perform well in more casual content with sub-optimal play.

[SeverianLyonesse]

Believing that fact is a logical fallacy, because if a job is tiered to be balanced and perform well in savage, then it is going to perform well in more casual content with sub-optimal play.

See, I think that is a fallacy, because it presumes that the complexity level of savage-level rotations will universally scale down for casual play. When in actuality rotations depend on certain patterns and combinations of abilities that can very easily be designed in a way that would be too obtuse for casual players to pick up and play "well".

For me this is SAM. I am absolutely a casual SAM player and my soft brain still hasn't had the opportunity to integrate any of its job abilities past level 54. The Kenki builders vs. Kenki spenders, the readying abilities, the Meditation stacks... And this is on top of the fact that I already know that the average DPS sprout isn't going to recognize the utility of using different Iaijutsu instead of going for Midare all the time.

[ArkenaeuxBelmont]

See, I think that is a fallacy, because it presumes that the complexity level of savage-level rotations will universally scale down for casual play. When in actuality rotations depend on certain patterns and combinations of abilities that can very easily be designed in a way that would be too obtuse for casual players to pick up and play "well".

For me this is SAM. I am absolutely a casual SAM player and my soft brain still hasn't had the opportunity to integrate any of its job abilities past level 54. The Kenki builders vs. Kenki spenders, the readying abilities, the Meditation stacks... And this is on top of the fact that I already know that the average DPS sprout isn't going to recognize the utility of using different Iaijutsu instead of going for Midare all the time.

Which is completely fine that you aren't comfortable with the optimized rotation of SAM, because any of the casual content does not demand that you perform 100% perfectly to beat it. That's what I was trying to convey. The way the dungeons are tailored, they can be beaten by four sub-optimally playing WoL's. The threshold for beating them is lower, and since the jobs are balanced via Savage numbers, sup optimal levels match up with casual content. It trickles down from the top, is what I was trying to say.

Apologies if I wasn't conveying what I was attempting to say well enough.

[Velnora]

See, I think that is a fallacy, because it presumes that the complexity level of savage-level rotations will universally scale down for casual play. When in actuality rotations depend on certain patterns and combinations of abilities that can very easily be designed in a way that would be too obtuse for casual players to pick up and play "well".

For me this is SAM. I am absolutely a casual SAM player and my soft brain still hasn't had the opportunity to integrate any of its job abilities past level 54. The Kenki builders vs. Kenki spenders, the readying abilities, the Meditation stacks... And this is on top of the fact that I already know that the average DPS sprout isn't going to recognize the utility of using different Iaijutsu instead of going for Midare all the time.

There isn't such thing as a "savage level rotation". There is the correct rotation, and the wrong rotation. Hence why jobs get balanced around the proper execution of their rotation.