i'm sick and tired of the excuse for not having unique or varied jobs

[Lihtleita]

People played HW monk quite a lot, not sure what you're talking about there

Also monk is more unique now than in 5.4 and more people are playing it

i played mnk during hw, not a lot of people played it compared to dragoon because it wasn't optimal for groups, being the only blunt dps without buff synergy

sb mnk was what i was referring to, not 5.4 when most of it was already stripped down

(edit) mind you im not saying current mnk is bad in any way. more people are playing it for a reason.

[Imoye]

The Jobs ARE varied to play

They aren't. Practically every healer, tank, DPS could be one class with different sub-classes which are for the most part the same. There are 20 jobs in this game, but in terms of actual gameplay variety and similarity, it's more like 5 or 6.

[LaylaTsarra]

I enjoy my WHM and RDM personally. GNB is fun too as is PLD.

[Mikey_R]

They aren't. Practically every healer, tank, DPS could be one class with different sub-classes which are for the most part the same. There are 20 jobs in this game, but in terms of actual gameplay variety and similarity, it's more like 5 or 6.

Tanks and healers could potentially feel the same to play just because they need to have some form of basic toolkit that is the same across the role. However, I would still argue that the DPS rotations for the tanks are different. You can simplify and say, well, 3/4 tanks have a spam button, however, PLD's come from it's rotation and WAR/DRK have to use a cooldown. PLD and GNB are fairly strict in their rotation, but they both feel different to play. WAR is more GCD focused where DRK has a ton of oGCDs to manage, WAR's damage buff is reapplied via GCD and DRK is via oGCD and the list goes on. Just looking at the bare basics of a job doesn't do enough to show how they are different.

For healers, not my strongest role and I rarely play them, however, if I do play them, I avoid SCH and AST and choose to go either WHM or SGE. Why do you think that is? It obviously isn't favouritism for pure over shield healing, however, they play differently to their counterparts enough to the point where I prefer one over the other.

Why is it I prefer the gameplay of MNK/RPR over NIN? I'm not a fan of Ninja at all and pretty much only play it to level it. But if everything is the same, why have I picked favourites.

I can reduce every job down to, they all do damage, therefore they are all the same, however, that is not an accurate representation of the jobs and just a massive oversimplification. All the jobs play differently when you look past the basics and the problem is, people don't look past the basics.

[Dyvid]

I'll agree a little more on Tanks and Healers, but not DPS which is what I was mainly thinking of.

Well..... I mean they were but it's moving more and more toward playing the same with each redesign. MNK and NIN have a similar mechanic now. One rear and one flank makes DRG, RPR, MNK feel the same to a degree.

[Burmecia]

Be the change you want to see! Viva la resistance! Allow SAMs or whoever is the NO-NO job of the week in your pf group!!

Pick job outside meta! Max substats every sheep shuns!
Realise that YOU probably are not the one who can squeeze the meaningful dps difference out of few points of crit... or whatever!

Realize that the difference is not that big and it does not really matter!

Maximixe fun, parse the enjoyment -- on your own conditions!!

[Raikai]

Tanks and healers indeed do have similar playstyles between themselves. Maybe I'd say GNB strays a little from it... I was also kind of let down by Sage, as it falls into the same spot as GNB but for healers, there's no actual meaningful divergence. I wonder if it's because of the roles?

DPSers are way ahead on that spectrum with more diverse playstyle despite the builder/spender mechanic repeating in some of them.

I do think the homogenization of party buffs is indeed being unified after Ninja's change.

[UkcsAlias]

Tanks and healers indeed do have similar playstyles between themselves. Maybe I'd say GNB strays a little from it... I was also kind of let down by Sage, as it falls into the same spot as GNB but for healers, there's no actual meaningful divergence. I wonder if it's because of the roles?

Its because healers only have a few basic abilities that are mandatory for them to perform, and all healers follow the same basics here (and this already excludes the job wide abilities like revive):
- 1 Basic healing ability that is supposed to be spammed
- 1 Basic DPS ability, that is supposed to be spammed
- 1 DoT ability
- 1 AoE ability
- 1 AoE heal

And on that a lot of similar abilities:
- A single target oGCD heal
- A single target regen
- An Aoe Regen

Healers generaly are defined by those alternative abilities, but no matter what healer, they essentialy all are very similar in result. But as DPS is supposed to be spammed like 80% of the time, and variety is lacking in that (even for sage), it just makes them all pretty much the same. Sage only having a few more buttons to press for DoTs.

But for a part, i think this should exist in healers, since if a healer otherwise doesnt realy know the general basics, its going to be an issue. This means only those special and very restricted alternative abilities are providing identity, and this barely does anything. The astrologer and scholar on that have most identity as you can see those flashing cards, or the pixie (and tbh, between those 2 i consider this very good variety). But the issue is that WHM and SGE simply do not feel special enough. They dont have anything being displayed that realy shows the class is in the team. WHM being just an AST without cards, and SGE being a SCH without pixie. SGE on that does show improvement in variety in its design (being a mix of WHM and SCH with a diffirent way to manage the abilities in button presses), but outside of that, its only visible towards the player as any other class is not going to pay attention to the buffs they receive (which is barely anything to begin with).

[Dzian]

Tanks and healers could potentially feel the same to play just because they need to have some form of basic toolkit that is the same across the role.

the only skill every tank needs to perform there role is something like "provoke" or an emnity grab of some form. thats it. nothing else.

do all tanks need rampart or a 20% damage mitigation tool? NO!.

they could have every tank work it in a way that feels totally different..

for example 3 tanks. all have 100,000HP and all are aboutto eat a 100,000 damage tankbuster.

Tank 1. could use a mitigation ability like rampart and straight up block 20% of that damage. thus survives tank buster with 20k hp.

tank 2. could just go RAWWWWWRRRRRRR!!! and gain a temporary boost in maximum HP so now they have 120,000 hp. take the 100,000 damage tank buster and still standing with 20,000 hp.

tank 3. could have some mechaninc that uses there MP as essentially a second HP Pool. so they take 100,000 damage but maybe 20,000 of it is MP damage and 80,000 is hp dmaage. still survives with 20k hp

3 ways of achieving the same result that all feel different.

similar things could work for last stands. tank 1 just just be blanket invincibility. tank 2 could be straight up +100% HP and +100% healing received. not quite invincible but pretty damn close.

would be miles better than this homogenized crap imo everything feels the same because it is the same.

[Mikey_R]

the only skill every tank needs to perform there role is something like "provoke" or an emnity grab of some form. thats it. nothing else.

I said they had to have the same basic toolkit, I never said they had to be the same. Very subtle bit important difference.

Take all the short cooldown defensives. They are all unique in their own way, however, at the core, it is still a defensive with a short cooldown designed to be used often.

The big tank cooldowns (Hallowed Ground, Living Dead etc.) all unique, but each tank still has one.

I would also say, you need more than just an enmity grab to function as a basic tank. You need Provoke, an enmity control (tank stances), single target damage, AoE damage and some form of damage mitigation, that is at minimum 5 actions. If you want tanks to start making mitigation rotations, then you need more defensives, if you want to add AoE mitigation, that is another, stuns/interrupts? another 2 (though I wish more was done with these).

Once you start building up what you want a tank to actually do, you will find things line up. You can add as much flair to an action as you want and in your examples, they are all just a 20% damage mitigation tool. Yes, they achieve it in different ways, but they are all still the same at the core. So it really depends how deep you want to go with the discussion on homogeneity.