Tank IDENTITY

[Shurrikhan]

See, I don't agree with balancing damage output against utility, because you can't compare the two. It's fine to balance damage output against raid damage buffs. I'd even argue that it's fine to balance damage output against considerations around uptime, resource generation, and burst, although you have to be careful because these can be very variable based off of fight design.

What are we calling utility, here, then? To me it's essentially anything that can form an advantage without being directly equatable to damage. But, that still has an eventual sort of equivocation. Uptime, resource generation, and burst, in the context of a fight, all likewise affect one's overall damage across a given fight at a given clear speed.

I'll agree that some fight-to-fight variation is fine --lest no job truly have any difference in output over downtime or no fight be permitted (manageable) downtime at all-- but for more utility-heavy (in whatever relevant form that utility may take) jobs not to simply typically fall short of or notably outperform utility-light jobs, job design does at least need to be mindful of those trade-offs, however complex they may be to calculate precisely.

Essentially, I disagree that you can't compare the two. You can and should, just with a given allowance for fight-to-fight variation. That allowance should not, however, allow one job's forms of utility doesn't come out on top, late-StB WAR-style, in every tier of every form of content on the mere basis that "it is utility and therefore not comparable."

If players are bothered by the power balance of raises, then that needs to be independently assessed. Perhaps there should be a cap on raises per character/party that varies with the difficulty level of the fight. You just need to identify other ways for 'lower utility' jobs to gain more utility. Although I'd love to see a MCH with a jumper cables/defibrillator raise some day.

I feel like the fairest approach is just the old Bard/MCH one seen with Ballad/Army's damage-down effect or Promotion's loss of Rook/Bishop autos. Rather than taxing the job directly for having the ability to use Raise, which may or not come to practice... you charge them only upon using it. That could be through more granular and granularly-affecting resources like MP (if its interactions were revised) or through shared resource CDs, but the idea is that the value of that hastened Raise (relative to a Swift-less healer's) and healer MP saved should be only a bit higher than its cost.

I have mixed feelings about the role actions system. It's convenient for standardizing common skills without having to invent new ones, although I wish that there was a way to optionally glamour over the animations to give some job specific flair (like Shadowskin/Foresight for Rampart, for example).

I feel like if we'd already want skill glamours --let alone unique icons, names, etc.-- for those Role Actions... isn't that just... to not have Role Actions.

I think that the anti-knockback tools are really just there as a timing check, for situations like cape/water Pinax.

That's my point, though. Those timing checks were already provided through pre-positioning or native knockback-cancels like movement skills (be they to-ally, to-enemy, both, or fixed-length). To then add a more lenient button, albeit on a long CD, just to reduce either mechanical depth in prepositioning or reduce variation in the means by which jobs deal with such mechanics... seems not just bloat, but actually diminishing.

I think it's the interrupt mechanics that need a review. <snip>

Agreed. I feel like just centralizing CC to some extent and giving the currently barebone DR systems a look-over would solve much of this. There's no reason, for instance, for Interject not to at least also be able to Pacify, or for non-spammable (or at least potency-less and GCD-consuming) hard CC (Sleep, Stun) to have a second, DR-less function, much like the Repose/Sleep->Addle effect you mentioned (or Pacify/Silence as a fallback from a DRed stun).

I'd also like to see more skills, especially among trash, that can be thus affected. We've the occasional melee-annoying large AoE (think Ktisis first pull) or skills that hit for about three autos at once (Wheel, etc.), but otherwise any sort of counterplay feels fairly rare and lackluster.

I think that there are plenty of ways to do a pure fluff action that's fun but doesn't provide any real combat advantage. Like if you could strike up a conversation with a Voidsent out of combat as a Reaper, Float into the air as a WHM, or disguise yourself as another character or NPC as a NIN.

I mentioned combat advantage for fluff actions (those that actually take up an ability slot) because you'd earlier mentioned concerns about action bloat. If that flavor is wholly passive then there is no such concern.

I wouldn't want to limit this to just passives, though. That could come in any form from revising currently bland and infrequent actions to actually have some fun and flavor, adding new actions altogether, to even having a job produce certain effects through varying means.

To take Mug, for example, (apart from the obvious reversion to 6.08 such that those running with a NIN can have back the other half of their raid sync optimization) I'd have loved to see that actually... "steal" things, such as collecting an "item" (pretty varied in name, but consistent in color scheme for a given effect -- and as an ability, really, as to still be queueable) that can then be woven any time up to the skill's CD-refresh.

I could give examples of the other two forms if curious, but this post has already gone long.

[Lyth]

...

Here's the thing. If you want to say that a job with access to raise should do X dps less than other jobs without raise, you need to be able to mathematically quantify how much that raise is worth in dps. And you can't do that in a consistent way.

And that's why it's better to compare quantifiable benefits with quantifiable ones, and non-quantifiable benefits with non-quantifiable ones. I don't know how much a raise is worth. But if you're not giving me access to raise, give me something else that is fun and unique to use. Like what would be the mathematical dps value of being able to set up a placeable 'Warp' spell between two points in an arena that other players can interact with (i.e. up to X uses)? I don't know, and I can't compare it to raise (or anything else, for that matter). You couldn't even compare two different applications of the same ability.

There are adjustments that you can make based on trends. Jobs with timer-gated burst tend do better in fights with lots of downtime, because you spend more of the effective fight time in a burst window. Jobs with resource-gated burst tend to do worse, because you usually have to be hitting the boss to generate resources. Jobs with a lot of mobility tools might do better on fights with mechanics that force you away from the boss. I think that these are all useful considerations to make when balancing dps. But the more abstract stuff? There's nowhere to start.

I think that the primary function of the role action system is to ensure that every job has access to a basic toolkit. That doesn't mean that it can't have flavor. You could very easily attach 'action glamor' to optional quest rewards, achievements, or even craftable items. Warcraft's Glyph system was a fun way to personalize a character by adding flames to your gapclosers or changing the colour of spell effects. It removes the obligation on the devs to have to come up with duplicate actions on every job, yet also lets them fill in some fun animations when there's time.

I'd really like to see some Treasure-Hunter (THF) related 'steal' options. I once proposed that the job should be introduced as a gathering job, and let you infiltrate areas by swapping clothes sets.