What are your thoughts on FFXIV's combat?

[Imora]

Healers should have more offensive spells then. Dps Healers are quite fun to many people. But to some, it's not their taste. FFXIV can have diverse healer styles that can appeal many people' tastes I guess.

You'll still have people that don't use them.

I'd rather some heal/nuke interplay.

[ReynTime]

Not a big fan of the DDR aspect of it or how rigid rotations are, or how jobs in the same role feel the same once you get used to the rotations.

This structure means anything that isn't a boss with enough floor is lava or exclusive mechanics is fought literally the same way during 80+ levels. It gets old very fast and makes fighting enemies with more or less HP or FATEs in general very boring.

This is why I hated when they got rid of enmity management. At least that added another factor in that you had to worry about when playing with randoms. And the homogeneity of jobs is another thing I don't like over specific compositions being better for specific fights. The concern with "balance" is so overplayed they have essentially killed anything resembling party synergy beyond the shallow 2min burst window design. More actions that complement other jobs' like a combo chain would have been far more engaging than just dodging AoEs and playing like everyone else is just AI controlled.

You'll still have people that don't use them.

I'd rather some heal/nuke interplay.

It doesn't freaking matter what the lowest common denominator will do with their jobs. If Healers had only 2 actions many of them would ignore their 2nd. It was the most useless pursuit the job design team could have focused on from the beginning.

[Supersnow845]

You'll still have people that don't use them.

I'd rather some heal/nuke interplay.

I mean heal nuke interplay also isn’t going to make people do damage on healers if they won’t already, SGE’s “identity” (yeah cause targeted embrace is totally an identity square enix) is literally built on this and people would still rather spam diagnosis

[Imora]

Not a big fan of the DDR aspect of it or how rigid rotations are, or how jobs in the same role feel the same once you get used to the rotations.

This structure means anything that isn't a boss with enough floor is lava or exclusive mechanics is fought literally the same way during 80+ levels. It gets old very fast and makes fighting enemies with more or less HP or FATEs in general very boring.

I'm not a fan of complex openers or rotations which is why I can't seem to main dps. And a lot of jobs aren't comfy on a controller for me. Too many buttons.

I'd rather my buttons have weight to them. Dragoon doesn't need a five part combo.

[Imora]

I mean heal nuke interplay also isn’t going to make people do damage on healers if they won’t already, SGE’s “identity” (yeah cause targeted embrace is totally an identity square enix) is literally built on this and people would still rather spam diagnosis

Yeah but stuff like "casting gcd heal gives stacking buff that increases potency to next damage ability by X" or vice versa, or something like that makes it more interesting if they beef up the unpredictableness of aoe damage. The fact that the pinnacle of difficult content can be solo healed by an ast tells me they need to ramp up damage output.

[Semirhage]

In all seriousness, it's finding the right recipe of risk and reward, plus decision making, plus encouraging skilled play, plus creating an intuitive path from novice to expert.

Despite the fact that Square seems to have finally turned their baleful gaze on some of the DPS classes, that role has seen some fantastic examples of how you do this well. I'll take just a small one: Shadowbringers Reprise. It's a Red Mage ability you probably haven't used very often. It's that rapier ability that becomes ranged when you have black/ white mana, and costs 5 of each.

It's not part of the main rotation. It's not a boring noninteractive ability you just spam on cooldown. In Endwalker, you can use it to move at the cost of a little damage you could have gained from slidecasting or saving a melee combo instead. But in Shadowbringers, it had an additional feature: risk and reward. See, it did *more* DPS than your spells (due to its shortened GCD), but *less* than your finisher combo. In theory, you could eke out a nice amount of extra damage by dumping mana into Reprise. But the catch is, you would *lose* damage if you drained yourself out of a melee combo over the course of a fight.

THAT is good game design. Abilities that make you stop and think for a second. Tradeoffs. Rewarding a little boldness but punishing recklessness. Something to think about beyond "is this oGCD off cooldown? Better push it again!" Having downsides with creative ways to work around them. Rewards for timing your greed well. Kits that encourage you to play the game skillfully with carrots and sticks.

Healer gameplay has essentially zero of this. You have a gazillion safety nets that you can use at your leisure, there's essentially no punishment for overuse unless you do it to a staggering degree, and your reward for playing well is yet more time to cast your one boring zero-thought, zero decision making spam spell. Again. And again. And again.

[VentVanitas]

Yeah but stuff like "casting gcd heal gives stacking buff that increases potency to next damage ability by X" or vice versa, or something like that makes it more interesting if they beef up the unpredictableness of aoe damage. The fact that the pinnacle of difficult content can be solo healed by an ast tells me they need to ramp up damage output.

They're never going to ramp up damage or change the way damage is dealt in raids. The dev team said this themselves. The only realistic solution to healer gameplay is by making their downtime kits more engaging like they used to be pre-Shadowbringers.

It's more feasible to just change the jobs rather than changing potentially all future fights.

[znushu]

I honestly don't like it.

The combat isn't very intuitive and at times feels clunky. The particle effects for spells and skills just masks the issues with the combat. honestly? it just creates visual clutter that gets worse when engaging in combat with other people. It also doesnt help that the team seems to be trying to convert FFXIV into a more action oriented combat game but frankly? the game is not built for fast paced combat especially in the backend. many things ingame rely and depend on a more slower paced combat like in FFXI that I still believe they should go back too.

and Its not like they can't make a MMORPG around that style of combat neither since games like Broken Rank have proven that the turn-based combat style can be used in a mmorpg game and people will love it.
https://youtu.be/PMgfElPLxLQ?t=999
(although the developers shot themselves in the foot with the horrible cash shop)

14 once did have a unique style of combat that did resembled FFXI. it just wasn't refined for PC usage but console usage and it did have some still minor issues with the combat that other companies would have refined overtime through patches instead of just discarding it in favor for a new style of combat seen in the game today that resembles World of Warcraft more a Final Fantasy title like the game use to have.

Solo Combat legacy Example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=193tAU5jY3s

Group Combat Legacy Example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuIE9i6cOxw

Raid Combat Legacy Example:

Instance Raid Imperial Device

Part 1; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0DwZGSQ1x4
Part 2; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Evsr-YMqkkM
Part 3; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNXL4fDPivk

Overworld Stronghold Raid Abaddon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg_lMaOWwV8

I know many people on these forums and even on the dev team want FF14 to have combat like in FFXV but it simply cannot work with how things work in 14 and unless the team decides to do a massive overhaul to the entire game and engine (again) the combat like there will never be in 14. It might be in the next mmo they release like a star ocean mmo or something but not here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpuQ_NEJDdA

If the team was smart they would revert back to a slower style a combat since that's the style of combat that works best for this title and i'm sorry people but no matter how much you all want action combat it simply can't work for FFXIV as the game was never built with that in mind.

[GoatOfWar]

In before the same dozen or so healers turn yet another thread into....oh wait nevermind.

It's a symptom of a bigger problem. Healers are barely functional fundamentally. They are designed to deal damage a lot more often than they heal. But then don't get an actual damage rotation. No job should have to mash 1 button 90% of the time.

[Liam_Harper]

I dislike ff14 combat. Not the encounter mechanics, they do fine there, but how the jobs play.

That's just how it is for me. I feel like it's clunky, unresponsive, rigid and boring and full of tedious filler. Dps is just the same 1-2-3 with oGCD formula in different flavors. I hate that things like mitigation or interrupts have animation delays when you press them. I don't like that tank mitigation is just something you press a few times per fight. I don't like that many dps oGCD's simply exist for the sake of filling a rotation and having something to press. Why the heck don't pots and sprint queue yet.

I complain about healers a lot and it's justified, but I main one because honestly dps and tanks are fairly bad in this game too.

I feel like job design was awful this expansion and I'm not a fan of all the useless traits, useless aoe versions of ST oGCD's and "button you can press when you use a long cooldown" we got on otherwise unchanged jobs. I just can't feel excited to play the same jobs I've been playing for years, just with a new tedious filler button.

Obviously this is all personal opinion and I respect if people love ff14 jobs. I also know the servers can't be overhauled and I like raids, so I play the game in acceptance of the poor combat. But that doesn't mean I have to like it. FF14 job combat just isn't good.