What are your thoughts on FFXIV's combat?

[Supersnow845]

But if you're talking "top 50 fastest clears" tracked by sites designed to be used by people pushing the toughest content, you're not getting anything close to a representative sample of the playerbase. The typical FFXIV player is not anywhere close to the "top 50 fastest clears." I expect the top players to be able to do things that you're typical, casual player isn't going to even dream about. The result says absolutely nothing about the usefulness of things like healers to what is far and away the most common FFXIV player.

The guy wanted and example of people being able to completely invalidate healers and I provided one, you aren’t doing the dungeon faster by dumping off the tank, you aren’t going faster by dumping off the DPS but you certainly are going faster by dumping off the healer

The core point is that it shouldn’t even be possible not that it’s only something more accomplished people can, seriously while GNB and DRK need some finesse any DF party doesn’t with a WAR or PLD does not need a healer and assuming none of the DPS are huffing paint you will go faster than having the healer there

[GoatOfWar]

The guy wanted and example of people being able to completely invalidate healers and I provided one, you aren’t doing the dungeon faster by dumping off the tank, you aren’t going faster by dumping off the DPS but you certainly are going faster by dumping off the healer

The core point is that it shouldn’t even be possible not that it’s only something more accomplished people can, seriously while GNB and DRK need some finesse any DF party doesn’t with a WAR or PLD does not need a healer and assuming none of the DPS are huffing paint you will go faster than having the healer there

And i mean, you need so little healing a red mage would suffice in normal mode content.

[Maltothoris]

I mean you want proof then here you go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBofKTvcCms Alzadalls Legacy done in 9:18.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hDqPG8ka8I Here is Smileton before patch 6.1.

It is very possible and more efficient to do so. The thing is most people are not good enough to do what they are doing basically between using potions and popping bloodbath arms length and the war ussing nascent flash and all that.

[Sebazy]

But if you're talking "top 50 fastest clears" tracked by sites designed to be used by people pushing the toughest content, you're not getting anything close to a representative sample of the playerbase. The typical FFXIV player is not anywhere close to the "top 50 fastest clears." I expect the top players to be able to do things that you're typical, casual player isn't going to even dream about. The result says absolutely nothing about the usefulness of things like healers to what is far and away the most common FFXIV player.

It honestly makes little difference until you go down to the depths of the sort of player who just sits in ground markers and afks. Eating the occasional avoidable aoe isn't a problem, keeping assize/star etc on cooldown takes care of that regardless. Modern dungeon bosses are literal med and cooldown breaks at this point and the trash only really gets nasty if you run out of cooldowns or simply never pop them in the first place.

If the healer is contributing damage or 'le gasp', you ditch them and get another DPS, you're not going to run out of cooldowns as the videos above attest to.

[SieyaM]

I would describe the combat as very rigid. There is just one rotation for each job that you must follow without deviation. The only difference between dungeon bosses and Savage is the dance you have to learn to avoid instant kill mechanics, what you are doing with your abilities is exactly the same.

[Midareyukki]

I would describe the combat as very rigid. There is just one rotation for each job that you must follow without deviation. The only difference between dungeon bosses and Savage is the dance you have to learn to avoid instant kill mechanics, what you are doing with your abilities is exactly the same.

We did use to have "less" rigid rotations before. There was still a meta, an optimal way of doing things and a map to press buttons to minmax the damage you dealt. But there was a bit of freedom in it. It wasn't a clear "you press this button on cooldown or choose to delay it a bit because of downtime", there were things that you did on specific windows that would vary given the boss and the party you had.
The game also had cross-class skills that required us to level up other jobs to access, but ultimately everyone agreed that there were only a handful of skills to take, and all the rest was forgettable.
Also, not every class was designed the same way. The idea of "buff windows lining up" was still rudimentary, as some buffs and rotations did line up, but some were just lining up once in a blue moon.
Not to mention how some classes were clearly better designed for content than others. This gave the illusion of variety and choice, but if you only planned on playing one job out of a role because it was the one you clicked with the most, you could have very well been kicked out simply because you didn't fit or would under perform. Examples included PLD who didn't resist magic damage. DRK (only seen it happen once tho) in the rare event that the fight was more on the physical side than magic. And Monk for some odd reason.
And that's without counting staples such as "we need a Bard for Foe Requiem", "we need Ninja for Trick Attack", "we need the Warrior to not overwrite the Ninja's debuff" or "we need a Dragoon to boost physical ranged DPS's damage".
All this had the bad effect of not being easy to balance since it was so inconsistent, and that's why they've kept streamlining ever since.

The current battle system is a lot smoother, a lot more straightforward, optimization isn't as bonkers as it used to be and thus there's a level of consistency that the devs are comfortable with.
However, the rigidness of the rotation brings up really awkward issues. Bard and Summoner, for example, are really reliant on having near-full uptime, and they get hampered whenever the boss decides to nope out. They can't adjust for downtime as easily as other classes, so it can really mess them up.

[Zanarkand-Ronso]

The problem is that once you get more experience you realize you only feel useful, but you aren't actually as useful in reality. Pretty much any sprout blindly spamming Medica II can keep a group alive just fine. In certain content like lv90 dungeons you're barely needed and in Normal raids you're just surplus and your co-heal could do the job for both of you.

Keeping people alive is a joke, your group could easily replace you and the only way to be genuinely useful is to contribute high dps while keeping everyone alive. But since the developers have made sure most content has no dps check and meters are banned, no one cares if you did damage (or might even dislike you for it).

The more experience you have, the less rewarding healing is and the more pointless you realize it is.

This is everybody else's experience, not mine. I still DPS, Im not just standing Idly by and just topping off HP all day.
Only time I feel like Im not contributing, is in a Dungeon and if there is a Warrior; who is overturned to high heck with its self sustain rending my healing Mostly m00t. But I dont run with Warriors in every piece of content, so my role isn't completely nullified.

Also...c'mon man, Medica 2 isn't THAT great lol

[Tetsujin]

It's alright. Lost a lot of RPG elements and the engagement factor over the years IMO, what with the continuous simplification and enforcing the 2-minute buff line ups, but it's okay. If it sounds unbelivable, look up how there used to be 3 ways to build SAM based on SKS and so on, for example, or how healers/bards/etc had actual Final Fantasy buffs, debuffs, and such things. It feels more like an action tab targeting system now days.

To be fair, fight design is where FFXIV has always shined but I wish we could get some of the old soul back instead of this lingering obsession to reduce any and all ways someone might fail.

[Atelier-Bagur]

I mean you want proof then here you go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBofKTvcCms Alzadalls Legacy done in 9:18.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hDqPG8ka8I Here is Smileton before patch 6.1.

It is very possible and more efficient to do so. The thing is most people are not good enough to do what they are doing basically between using potions and popping bloodbath arms length and the war ussing nascent flash and all that.

All this proves to me that Warriors are waaaay too OP with their self-healing. I want to see this same efficiency done with other tanks such as Gunbreaker, Dark Knight and Paladin. But yeah this is what I was fearing the most, I realize its completely possible to complete content without healers.....but you need a Warrior to make sure it's doable right? (at least doable in terms of efficiency)

This means the devs really need to nerf them. And I'm saying this as a casual Warrior main.

[Supersnow845]

All this proves to me that Warriors are waaaay too OP with their self-healing. I want to see this same efficiency done with other tanks such as Gunbreaker, Dark Knight and Paladin. But yeah this is what I was fearing the most, I realize its completely possible to complete content without healers.....but you need a Warrior to make sure it's doable right? (at least doable in terms of efficiency)

This means the devs really need to nerf them. And I'm saying this as a casual Warrior main.

No if you check the top 50 PLD and GNB are also strongly represented, DRK generally needs a RDM as a pseudo healer but it’s still plenty possible

All the tanks are just too strong/the damage too low, the expert dungeons also suffer from the problem of dungeons are faster the more you can pull, if there were no walls between bosses and you could quad pull then it would likely be impossible to do a speed pull without healers (though you could still easily do two double pulls like currently)

Tank self sustain across the board is just cracked compared to the outgoing damage