Hissatsu: Kaiten

[Silver-Strider]

Right... Ten Chi Jen, Suiton into cooldowns.

At no point does it feel like the job stutters because of a randomly placed cast-bar.

I have to stop moving for Ten Chi Jen and if I do move, the rotation is thrown off because I miss the Sulton at the end. It's way more punishing than Midare and has the exact same stipulation of being unable to move but at least all I do with Midare is delay the skill a second or two. You're argument that Midare is some sort of stutter is asinine. I don't even play SAM or NIN and I can tell you, I much prefer SAM's "stutter" to NIN's Ten Chi Jen any day of the week.

[Xenon_S]

I have to stop moving for Ten Chi Jen and if I do move, the rotation is thrown off because I miss the Sulton at the end. It's way more punishing than Midare and has the exact same stipulation of being unable to move but at least all I do with Midare is delay the skill a second or two. You're argument that Midare is some sort of stutter is asinine. I don't even play SAM or NIN and I can tell you, I much prefer SAM's "stutter" to NIN's Ten Chi Jen any day of the week.

Worst part is when the suiton animatiin comes out but you move before the buff is applied, it just feels bad.
Tenchijin effect ending with movement is just not nesessary at this point since they practically force you to do suiton and eat it with meisui (which is actual button bloat as a result of removing flexibility from gameplay). In no scenario you want to do less than 3 mudras in TCJ and preventing movement is just a feel bad restriction. Why not make it so that the TCJ buffs ends upon executing 3 mudras, or by pressing TCJ again (with a 1 sec CD to prevent misfire from spamming) like how you turn off tank stance?

[GrizzlyTank]

I have to stop moving for Ten Chi Jen and if I do move, the rotation is thrown off because I miss the Sulton at the end. It's way more punishing than Midare and has the exact same stipulation of being unable to move but at least all I do with Midare is delay the skill a second or two. You're argument that Midare is some sort of stutter is asinine. I don't even play SAM or NIN and I can tell you, I much prefer SAM's "stutter" to NIN's Ten Chi Jen any day of the week.

Too be frank, hadn't played Nin in a while and completely forgot that "Ten Chi Jen" was the name of that skill, and it does feel annoying having to stand still to use it. Still it's only once every 2 min and every 2nd burst, compared to Sam which has to deal with it's annoyance every 20ish second.

This bothers me more than the change to SAM specifically. And part of it is due to hardcore players insisting on set rotations and syncing up burst windows, and the devs responding by making fights even more scripted to a timer and moving even more jobs toward 1 or 2 minute burst rotations.

That bores me. I want reactionary gameplay, not a piece of music I have to memorize. I want to actually feel good for making immediate choices, not feel bad for not being perfectly in sync with a bunch of drones. But people treated the game that way and it has become the dominant paradigm.

My biggest complaint with the jobs in FFXIV, they are almost exclusively fixed rotations, with dancer, bard and blm being outliners. To diversify it a bit they could at least have made it so that not every resource generation had fixed numbers, so instead of 5 it could have been 4-7 or 10 on crit.

Dancer also suffers from being stuck with the same gcd as all other jobs resulting in their core rotation feeling like an absolute bore.

[SeverianLyonesse]

imagine blaming 'hardcore' players for these issues
lol
lmao

It's been a self-reinforcing feedback loop, and hardcore raiders have been part of that. Though I also think that the game's design--across several facets--was what started everything in that direction.

My biggest complaint with the jobs in FFXIV, they are almost exclusively fixed rotations, with dancer, bard and blm being outliners. To diversify it a bit they could at least have made it so that not every resource generation had fixed numbers, so instead of 5 it could have been 4-7 or 10 on crit.

Dancer also suffers from being stuck with the same gcd as all other jobs resulting in their core rotation feeling like an absolute bore.

Except as we have been seeing, the game is constantly *reducing* damage variability. And again I don't think it's totally hardcore raiders fault because the devs seem quite trigger happy when it comes to killing off job skills and entire mechanics like multiclassing, different equippable weapons, elemental weaknesses, TP, healer damage, and now DoT and crits. They have been oversimplifying gleefully. But while some of these changes are definitely in service of casual players, reducing damage variability is pretty much solely to please parsers. For casuals it wouldn't matter because they suck at combat, and for most midcores it's actually a negative because variability *is* the fun.

[LeonKeyh]

But while some of these changes are definitely in service of casual players, reducing damage variability is pretty much solely to please parsers. For casuals it wouldn't matter because they suck at combat, and for most midcores it's actually a negative because variability *is* the fun.

Reducing damage variability is not to please the parsers, it's so that you're not singling out and gimping certain classes for certain fights. I imagine that parsers would LOVE to put together the perfect "Slashing team" for a boss that is weak to slashing with +slashing buffs and 6 SAMs/NINs and cackle gleefully as they top all of the parses. The problem with that is the _casual_ or _semi-casual_ players that only have MNK or a caster leveled being kept out of that fight because maybe that boss is strong against crushing/magic. It's so that fights are arbitrarily nerfing certain classes because if that happens you'll absolutely see bad players not taking those people because they don't understand that the difference between a good play and a bad player is even more important.

Variability isn't fun when it results in you not getting invited to a group because of the job you play/want to play.

[SeverianLyonesse]

Reducing damage variability is not to please the parsers, it's so that you're not singling out and gimping certain classes for certain fights. I imagine that parsers would LOVE to put together the perfect "Slashing team" for a boss that is weak to slashing with +slashing buffs and 6 SAMs/NINs and cackle gleefully as they top all of the parses. The problem with that is the _casual_ or _semi-casual_ players that only have MNK or a caster leveled being kept out of that fight because maybe that boss is strong against crushing/magic. It's so that fights are arbitrarily nerfing certain classes because if that happens you'll absolutely see bad players not taking those people because they don't understand that the difference between a good play and a bad player is even more important.

Variability isn't fun when it results in you not getting invited to a group because of the job you play/want to play.

I don't agree with this, because you are kind of blurring the line between the two.

Damage typing was removed yes, to make all jobs "viable" and accessible for casuals/midcores.

Damage *variability*, particularly when it comes to critical hits, buff windows, and rotation bloat, is what has been consistently removed for the sake of parsers.

There is some overlap and the two do affect each other. A lot of changes made for the sake of casuals like removing of elemental/damage typing, TP, etc. do *de facto* affect damage variability even if that is not the primary purpose. But reduction of crits and the homogenization of buff windows is purely in service of hardcore raiders.

Which, in a similar vein, I have been hearing a lot of people whinging for Blood Weapon stacks on DRK along with Delirium and it is something I just don't agree with. I don't want *every* ability on a job to be a stack. I *like* weird buff windows. It's not efficient but it at least keeps gameplay interesting.

[LeonKeyh]

I don't agree with this, because you are kind of blurring the line between the two.

Damage typing was removed yes, to make all jobs "viable" and accessible for casuals/midcores.

Damage *variability*, particularly when it comes to critical hits, buff windows, and rotation bloat, is what has been consistently removed for the sake of parsers.

There is some overlap and the two do affect each other. A lot of changes made for the sake of casuals like removing of elemental/damage typing, TP, etc. do *de facto* affect damage variability even if that is not the primary purpose. But reduction of crits and the homogenization of buff windows is purely in service of hardcore raiders.

Which, in a similar vein, I have been hearing a lot of people whinging for Blood Weapon stacks on DRK along with Delirium and it is something I just don't agree with. I don't want *every* ability on a job to be a stack. I *like* weird buff windows. It's not efficient but it at least keeps gameplay interesting.

I misunderstood what you meant by damage variability; You're talking about autocrits/DHs.

Even then I disagree it was made for hardcore raiders because I'm sure that they don't want to have multiple materia melds for each of the jobs that they want to play. Adding autocrit to SAM abilities is going to mean that crit materia is going to be less useful on SAM which will lead to yet another job that doesn't really share ideal melds with jobs that share the same gear. Magical Ranged is already a mess when it comes to that, and WAR is much different from the rest of the tanks because of its auto DH.

I can't see any hardcore player wanting something like this. They LIKE damage variability.

Homogenization of buff windows is, again, not in the service of hardcore raiders. "Hardcore" raiders would easily be able to line up buffs with different cooldowns (IF that's something that would deem to be useful. They would be able to easily go through the math of the buff and see whether holding a 90 cooldown for 30 seconds is worth it to stack the buff with 120 second buffs. That is stuff that "hardcore" raiders LOVE to do. The change to buff windows was squarely done to lower/remove the large DPS difference between midcore/lowcore raiders and hardcore raiders. I'm sure hardcore raiders dislike the change because it removes skill expression and puts them closer in performance to those midcore raiders.

I agree with you on the Blood Weapon/Delirium stacks; I enjoy knowing what buffs need to be done in the second OGCD window to ensure that you get all of the GCDs you need into them. But I think the people whining for those stacks are just wondering WHY they went ahead and streamlined it for jobs like WAR, but didn't for DRK (and they typically bring it up as "proof" that DRK is largely neglected).

[Rilifane]

Homogenization of buff windows is, again, not in the service of hardcore raiders. "Hardcore" raiders would easily be able to line up buffs with different cooldowns (IF that's something that would deem to be useful. They would be able to easily go through the math of the buff and see whether holding a 90 cooldown for 30 seconds is worth it to stack the buff with 120 second buffs. That is stuff that "hardcore" raiders LOVE to do. The change to buff windows was squarely done to lower/remove the large DPS difference between midcore/lowcore raiders and hardcore raiders. I'm sure hardcore raiders dislike the change because it removes skill expression and puts them closer in performance to those midcore raiders.

I agree.
Changes that make it easier to calculate something or get the maximum beenfit from something are bringing the skill floor up so the difference between low skill and high skill players becomes smaller. Parsers, high skill players, hardcore raiders etc. don't ask for such things because they don't need them.
They know when to delay buffs to align naturally misaligned raid buffs according to kill times, they know how to play around different burst windows without losing potency during the big 2min windows or even reopener. They largely enjoy it because it gives them more options to squeeze out that last bit of dps by thinking about it instead of just getting it handed. TA is the last remaining buff that isn't on 120s but with the Mug change, it will be.
Now the only thing left to play around with are AST cards and longer raid buffs to snapshot as many buffs as possible with each GCD/ oGCD which isn't much.

Imagine being this wrong. Can't be me. Ignore that samurai has 33 buttons and controllers can only fit 32 and that's not including limit break. Samurai and scholar are over the cap.

And what about all the skill merge proposals made in this thread that would free up to 5 buttons while keeping existing skills?
If it was really about button bloat, they have more than enough to merge without affecting a SAM's rotation or making it job gauge a pointless spam-meter. Merging mutually exclusive skills would be the first priority if button bloat was truly their only concern.

[OdinelStarrei]

Which, in a similar vein, I have been hearing a lot of people whinging for Blood Weapon stacks on DRK along with Delirium and it is something I just don't agree with. I don't want *every* ability on a job to be a stack. I *like* weird buff windows. It's not efficient but it at least keeps gameplay interesting.

I agree with you on the Blood Weapon/Delirium stacks; I enjoy knowing what buffs need to be done in the second OGCD window to ensure that you get all of the GCDs you need into them. But I think the people whining for those stacks are just wondering WHY they went ahead and streamlined it for jobs like WAR, but didn't for DRK (and they typically bring it up as "proof" that DRK is largely neglected).

Hi, I'm the person who has spent almost three years of his life on this forum trying to get Blood Weapon adjusted after the changes. I was among those making bug reports about it. I was the one who was writing up dissertations on how blood weapon inconsistency is bad game design, both here and ingame. It was my question in the QA thread that got over 150 likes regarding an issue that SE DELIBERATELY ignored, despite multiple content creators going to Yoshida directly to explain why it's bad, only to be told, "lmao have you checked your internet connection? We haven't received any feedback on Blood Weapon" Except that they did, both in JP and NA. I'll nest the proof of being ignored from JP alone right here, you can look at my post history if you want NA, naturally I had nothing else to do with my pathetic life. Just search the term "ブラッドウェポン" if you don't believe me.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5069443 - Blood Weapon extension

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5067642 - Blood Weapon extension

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5065250 - Blood Weapon extension

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5689497 - Blood Weapon extension

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5683173 - Blood Weapon stacks, also suggests Blood Weapon could be similar to Infuriate.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5683064 - Big post, 50 likes. Mirrors EN complaints. Asks for Blood Weapon stacks.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5683983 - Blood Weapon stacks.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5705067 - Blood Weapon stacks.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5683043 - Blood Weapon stacks.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5682973 - Another big post, 40 likes. Mirrors EN complaints, and links to EN megathread. Blood Weapon stacks.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5683020 - Blood Weapon stacks, responds to the above post.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5680557 - Blood Weapon complaint.

https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post5681485 - Another big post, 53 likes. It's a translation of an EN megathread post, mirroring EN complaints. Blood Weapon stacks. (They translate the correct post, but accidentally link the post below the translated post)
-Thanks OkorOvorO, I know you waste your life here as well-

Do you even remember this complete garbage from the Media Tour?

Mrhappy1227: I have a question in a similar vein - many skills have been adjusted over time to make them more friendly for high ping players such as Warrior's Inner Release in the Media Tour build and the Perfect Balance stacks that were added to Monk. Some skills such as Hypercharge, Wildfire, and Blood Weapons still have tight buff windows that can be punishing if the player’s connection is even just a bit slower. How does the team decide which skills receive these kinds of adjustments and which ones do not?

Yoshida: I think a lot of it depends on player feedback, there are certain actions we decide to switch over as like a charge action with the stacking to alleviate some of the frustration and stress players are experiencing. It also depends on what kind of stress players as experiencing and what we identify. Sometimes it is a matter of changing a certain skill to become a charge action or something we that adjust the recast timing on to be a bit shorter in its cycle.

Those are some of the elements we would look into. If we're talking about latency here, and apologies for repeating myself, we would need further data in order for us to analyze it properly to see what is causing it and recreate the issue on our end. If it an issue with latency I would recommend going to the forums and setting up a thread so the developers can see what kind of issue you're having and glean the information needed so we can analyze it properly and make adjustments so it becomes a bit more comfortable.

This is the response we get after years of feedback that anyone who plays DRK at even a somewhat competent level would notice almost immediately if they didn't play Dark Knight in the server room basement, like how I did on ShB launch week.

The duration on Blood Weapon isn't even right. It says 10 seconds, but unlike old Inner Release and Delirium where the duration was closer to 10.6 seconds in order to provide some leeway, Blood Weapon is ABSURDLY strict at 9.97 - 10.0 exactly, depending on timing the server receives the input. This doesn't seem like a huge deal, until you realize that Unmend/Unleash/Stalwart Soul are all spells that are LOCKED at 2.50 GCD. This means it's outright impossible to get all five hits of Blood Weapon in most AoE situations without Blood Gauge stockpiled or Delirium (remember, old Delirium didn't always line up with BW). You can go test this yourself right now, because Square Enix obviously didn't, hence the bafflement and anger of DRKs around the world. And god forbid you clipped, or had to move the boss or disengage for any reason, because you can just kiss those resources goodbye for the upside of having a significantly worse version of Infuriate. Even when you put BW in the second oGCD slot, it still remains incredibly inconsistent to this day, and I live on the West Coast. Someone who lives on the East Coast, or really, anywhere that isn't in really close proximity to the servers physically was recommended to invest in a VPN or other tunneling service to boost the connection just so this cursed buff doesn't randomly screw them. It's not interesting, it's stupid jank. Give me back Scourge, or make Darkside an actual mechanic instead of being literally not relevant, or even another GCD outside of 123+gauge spender.

And regarding "whining" or "wanting DRK to be interesting", you know what we actually would've preferred over stacks? GIVING US BACK ORIGINAL BLOOD WEAPON THAT WASN'T BROKEN.The one that didn't fall into the same 60/120/180 window that everything else in the game does at 40 second cooldown, the one that actually had a gameplay impact from increased SkS, the one that actually provided a substantial amount of resources, the one that had interplay within it's own kit thanks to old Delirium, the thing that made SkS DRK viable instead of mashing all your materia slots with Crit/Direct Hit, basically, the one that was unique to Dark Knight. SE would never do that though, return what was lost, so we have to beg for stacks instead.

If they are going to ruin DRK, at least make it consistently awful, instead of a variance between "I hate this" and "the game hates me".

And if you want proof that DRK is the "ignored" one, explain to me why we had to suffer with Living Dead for six years while every other invulnerability skill that it could possibly have an advantage over got buffed, on top of the absolutely dreadful treatment the job has gotten after mid-SB. I'm so distrustful, I don't think they are capable of fixing it on Tuesday without mucking something up. We don't have a 300 page megathread and Tank Roles essentially becoming the "Grand DRK Complaint Archive" for no reason, even if some of those takes are "questionable" at best. If it wasn't for SCH and AST, DRK would be the gold medalist for "Most misunderstood and watered down job."

God I hate Blood Weapon.