Paladin doesn't suck, 2 minute rotations just ruined combat

[Sparkthor]

Maybe yes, though if you perform well (mainly for tanks and healers I feel, by using mitigation etc) it would be a bit faster I imagine.
Does taking hits while a mitigation is up charges LB faster currently ?

Some actions used to help fill the LB gauge, like make people able to survive some hit thanks to shields, or use heal on critical sitatuation on tank. If I'm not mistaken, crit used to help too. One huge exemple of LB gauge abuse is a chinese speed kill of O8S part 2, with 5 melee LB3 thanks to avec multiple raids buster while the full team is a one HP. On a side note, i think this abuse leads to the bonus shield on crit adlo to be a saperate buff which cannot be extends with deployment tactics.

But even if some actions helps to builds LB, it's seems to be minor as few guide elaborate on it, and just say : have a proper party group with no double classes.

[Mikey_R]

Except PvE is designed the same way - they don't care about you messing up your rotation, because they've consistently made it to the point that you almost *can't* screw up your rotation anymore ...

Personal LBs is more of a flavor thing to me, more than a design thing. ...

In fights that actually matter, messing up your rotation can be detrimental to the point you cannot clear the fight. However, to counter your point, look at healers. They are as simple as it gets in their DPS rotation and they complain about that simplicity. If a fight is going well, they even know where they will use their healing tools, so that isn't something that concerns them either. Infact, general consensus on jobs tend to be, they need to make them more complex. People hate the dumbing down. You say they should just trim the fat, but the fat is what keeps some jobs interesting in the first place. Both boss mechanics and job rotational complexity have to be balanced and making one of them too simple is just going to hamper enjoyment.

As for LBs, there is no reason a long cooldown couldn't be flavourful. However, one of the things with PvP is that every LB is unique, and has different utilities designed to be used in different ways. That sort of thing will not work in PvE and, depending on how you want LBs to play out, could even prevent a job from being used, just because it isn't useful. As a quick example, let's compare 2 made up tank LBs. One is purely defensive, one is purely offensive. The only thing that really matters is offence, how quickly you can take out the enemy. Reason being, all tanks are given enough mitigation tools to survive a fight, any extra is pretty much wasted, so, you take the extra damage. Ok, so, now we have 2 options, either make both tanks purely offensive, or purely defensive. If you make them both defensive, does this mean you should start making fights with this in mind? Having that extra strong tank buster forcing the LB usage? You have basically make a mechanic for a specific button there, not really all that flexible. You could make them both offensive, again, there is no reason why this couldn't be long cooldown action which obviously makes it flavourful to the job. Job flavour really isn't an argument for a mechanic after all.

Also, define 'playing well', what does that mean? Is it just that you hit things on the GCD? Well then, using Throwing Dagger is going to be just as effective as doing Ninja's 123, so are you really rewarding good play? How about also basing it on how long your oGCDs are sitting not used? Well, what about the fights where you might delay your 2 minute burst to better fit fight mechanics? Are you going to punish them for optimising?

Also, the 'get lucky with crits' is all down to the 2 minute meta and the insane damage you get from that period of time. If buffs were more spread out, crit variance would be less.

[Ransu]

-snip-

Have you played since legion when they removed more than half the skills and brought in borrowed power and started shifting to almost entirely a GCD system with very few oGCD skills?

The majority of the classes in WoW now are literally only 3 or 4 buttons. Hell demon hunter is literally a 2 button rotation and ret paladin is barely 4 buttons but generally 3 buttons on most builds. WoW combat since legion has been incredibly simplistic and boring. Rogue is probably one of the few nuanced classes left and they still suffer the same issue of heavy GCD limitations and almost no oGCD's and only a handful of skills. FFXIV pve is fun BECAUSE of the abundance of skills and heavy use of oGCD weaving. Reducing it down to be like pvp would be awful.

[Absurdity]

You also have to keep in mind that while we might be okay with 8 core skills in savage/ultimate fights (I don't think we would but let's assume so), what happens when we step into more casual content, you know the thing that makes up 90% of this game's pve?

I'm already bored to death in normal dungeons and a lot of extreme fights with all the skills we currently have, reduce that down to a pvp style system and I'll have to hook myself up to an IV drip with espresso just to not fall asleep.

[Gserpent]

You also have to keep in mind that while we might be okay with 8 core skills in savage/ultimate fights (I don't think we would but let's assume so), what happens when we step into more casual content, you know the thing that makes up 90% of this game's pve?

I'm already bored to death in normal dungeons and a lot of extreme fights with all the skills we currently have, reduce that down to a pvp style system and I'll have to hook myself up to an IV drip with espresso just to not fall asleep.

Casual content is always going to be boring. There's no way around that. It has to be, in order to remain accessible to effectively all players who wish to participate in it (even with trusts, people will still probably use Duty Finder for dailies if nothing else.) It does so little damage that healers don't have to do any meaningful healing and tanks don't really need to worry about mitigating it properly and DPS players can just stand in the fire nine times out of ten because it's so easy to heal through it. DPS players additionally don't need to do proper rotations, because there are no enrage timers, or in the very rare cases where they exist (a few normal raids here and there), they are *incredibly* generous. "3 DPS and 1 tank" was already meta in ShB and it's even more dominant in EW now that all tanks were given a WAR-like toolkit full of absurd sustain and healing - if you're playing with a full party, you literally do not use healers.

If Square-Enix actually cared about casual content, that content that the overwhelming majority of the playerbase participates in, then they would have done a top-to-bottom complete and total rework of ability trees. Classes getting AOE buttons earlier, getting complete elements of their class earlier, getting core job elements earlier (lilies and such), and so on. But they didn't. DRG and NIN still have to wait into the 40's to get even one AOE button, WHM doesn't really play remotely like WHM until... what, 54? when they get the first Afflatus skill. And so on.

So I'm operating on the assumption that Square-Enix *do not care* about casual content, except to ensure that it is as accessible as they can reasonably make it so that all players can do it reliably and at a reasonable speed regardless of their ability to play the game. I don't think, for one moment, that Square-Enix is actually designing combat systems around that content. I think their intention with "continuing forward with 5.0 design" is that they're trying to make it as easy as reasonable for "casual" players to break into Ex and Savage content as possible. I don't know if they've been successful on that front or not, since achievement scraping etc won't really give you good data on "current content" clears, and "casual" players probably aren't utilizing parsing tools.

In fights that actually matter, messing up your rotation can be detrimental to the point you cannot clear the fight. However, to counter your point, look at healers. They are as simple as it gets in their DPS rotation and they complain about that simplicity. If a fight is going well, they even know where they will use their healing tools, so that isn't something that concerns them either. Infact, general consensus on jobs tend to be, they need to make them more complex. People hate the dumbing down. You say they should just trim the fat, but the fat is what keeps some jobs interesting in the first place. Both boss mechanics and job rotational complexity have to be balanced and making one of them too simple is just going to hamper enjoyment.

As for LBs, there is no reason a long cooldown couldn't be flavourful. However, one of the things with PvP is that every LB is unique, and has different utilities designed to be used in different ways. That sort of thing will not work in PvE and, depending on how you want LBs to play out, could even prevent a job from being used, just because it isn't useful. As a quick example, let's compare 2 made up tank LBs. One is purely defensive, one is purely offensive. The only thing that really matters is offence, how quickly you can take out the enemy. Reason being, all tanks are given enough mitigation tools to survive a fight, any extra is pretty much wasted, so, you take the extra damage. Ok, so, now we have 2 options, either make both tanks purely offensive, or purely defensive. If you make them both defensive, does this mean you should start making fights with this in mind? Having that extra strong tank buster forcing the LB usage? You have basically make a mechanic for a specific button there, not really all that flexible. You could make them both offensive, again, there is no reason why this couldn't be long cooldown action which obviously makes it flavourful to the job. Job flavour really isn't an argument for a mechanic after all.

Also, define 'playing well', what does that mean? Is it just that you hit things on the GCD? Well then, using Throwing Dagger is going to be just as effective as doing Ninja's 123, so are you really rewarding good play? How about also basing it on how long your oGCDs are sitting not used? Well, what about the fights where you might delay your 2 minute burst to better fit fight mechanics? Are you going to punish them for optimising?

Also, the 'get lucky with crits' is all down to the 2 minute meta and the insane damage you get from that period of time. If buffs were more spread out, crit variance would be less.

Square-Enix also routinely ignores healer complaints, so they are apparently just fine with very simple DPS rotations. Even actual DPS classes have very simple DPS rotations these days. It's nothing compared to pre-ShB designs. If you are participating in fights that actually matter, you are almost certainly a player of sufficient skill that your rotation is muscle memory and as such you have a near-zero chance of *meaningful* DPS losses from rotation errors. Breaking one or two combos across an 8 minute encounter is *not* going to tank your DPS to the point that you would prevent a clear from taking place.

No... what causes failed attempts is people dying or getting hit with DD. Outside of P8S (which Square-Enix specifically said was their fault for overtuning it), content is not and has not been so tightly tuned that you need 90th percentile performance from all/most players in order to clear it. Square-Enix clearly does not want players to be able to "fail" their rotation. I very strongly disagree with this design, but it is what it is. What they've done to WAR from SB to ShB to EW is probably going to be representative of what we can expect for class design shifts going forward into 7.0. Particularly since player reception and reaction to WAR has been *incredibly* positive in EW (how many memes did you see about "I'm the healer now!" and crap like that?)

For tank LBs? I dunno, man. You'd have to hash that stuff out. I think you'd probably just make all LBs just do damage in a flashy way, since tying an extra mitigation skill to proper DPS performance wouldn't work well for a lot of reasons. There's a ton of flashy, fancy attacks and spells classes in Final Fantasy have used throughout the generations, I'm sure they could pull from those to come up with something really neat for each class.

As far as "proper DPS performance" goes? It would probably be based on completing action combos, keeping GCD uptime, and things like that. It might be just as simple as having some base level of fill rate (say, 0.5% per sec, so you would charge in 120 sec), and then every time you use an action you get a tiny boost, and you get a slightly larger boost for using job abilities (Fell Cleave, Afflatus skills, etc) or completing weaponskill combo chains. Maybe healers would get a larger boost for using a damage spell, but only once every 5 sec or so (so like one out of every three GCDs) to help reward healers for DPSing? There's a lot of things you could do to softly reinforce proper play, and your reward for playing well (for certain definitions of "playing well" anyway) is you get to pop off your super flashy BIG NUMBERS button that makes a loud noise and spell effect everyone can see.

We've seen from the WAR changes, alone, that most players don't really care about nitty gritty numbers and performance metrics, they care about flashy spell effects and BIG NUMBERS or I'M THE HEALER NOW type stuff. To me, switching things over to a "personal LB" system seems like a slam dunk.

[Shurrikhan]

Have you played since legion when they removed more than half the skills and brought in borrowed power and started shifting to almost entirely a GCD system with very few oGCD skills?

Yes. Have you?

Two things happened in Legion:

1. Consolidation of non-integral flavor skills, often into more integral combat-useful skills (instead of reapplying Flametongue Weapon per hour, it became an additional effect on a rotational attack) and of cumbersome means of reaching a given capacity that taxed class utility for their maximal use despite their high opportunity costs (GCD-based stance-shifting on Death Knight in place of just a stronger mobility, defensive, and haste CDs).
2. To reduce "one-shot macro" play in PvP and animation-cancelling convulsions in general, many former oGCD CDs were given direct damage, too, but put on the GCD. That did not remove the number of CDs, nor the game's complexity for most specs (with just as many ending up notably more complex).

Rogue is probably one of the few nuanced classes left and they still suffer the same issue of heavy GCD limitations and almost no oGCD's and only a handful of skills.

Rogue has about twice the oGCD apm that it had pre-Legion, requires far more attention to combo point timing and usage in most competitive builds, and a majority of competitive builds tends towards more criteria affecting its APL than in MoP or WoD (i.e., greater complexity in decision-making) and stricter burst windows once a given string is fully setup (no more decisions to be made at that point, just execution).

Hell demon hunter is literally a 2 button rotation

7+ for any competitive build, and that's leaving out damaging mobility skills.

ret paladin is barely 4 buttons but generally 3 buttons on most builds

11-12 for the meta build.

By all means, it could be boring to you even when having higher apms and many specs requiring a whole lot more considerations than just adjusting string lengths (pretty much BLM only) and/or overclocking/underclocking a static rotation (mostly just SAM)... but your estimations are grossly out of touch.

A geared SAM could likewise consolidate its combos and play in single-target with 4 buttons and do better than terribly, but you wouldn't exactly call that the button count for the job, would you? So why the false or at least massively skewed narrative for your point of comparison? Beast Mastery is the only spec that's anywhere near to your estimations and it has always been that way, intended as a purposely easy/forgiving spec -- not just since Legion.

[Shurrikhan]

Maybe yes, though if you perform well (mainly for tanks and healers I feel, by using mitigation etc) it would be a bit faster I imagine.
Does taking hits while a mitigation is up charges LB faster currently ?

https://www.akhmorning.com/allagan-s...ive-generation

To briefly touch on just the mitigation question -- only if it would otherwise kill you, and only if you didn't use an invuln (though I'm not sure if that refers to 100% mitigation or the broader "can't die" category of skills).

Put most simply, PvE LBs do not generate with damage/mitigation/healing done, but simply over time and with specific bonus events (2 types of which are universal, and 3 of which are encounter-specific).

PvP Adrenaline Rushes, on the other hand, would function closer to what you're imagining, I think?

[Ransu]

Yes. Have you?

Two things happened in Legion:

1. Consolidation of non-integral flavor skills, often into more integral combat-useful skills (instead of reapplying Flametongue Weapon per hour, it became an additional effect on a rotational attack) and of cumbersome means of reaching a given capacity that taxed class utility for their maximal use despite their high opportunity costs (GCD-based stance-shifting on Death Knight in place of just a stronger mobility, defensive, and haste CDs).
2. To reduce "one-shot macro" play in PvP and animation-cancelling convulsions in general, many former oGCD CDs were given direct damage, too, but put on the GCD. That did not remove the number of CDs, nor the game's complexity for most specs (with just as many ending up notably more complex).

Rogue has about twice the oGCD apm that it had pre-Legion, requires far more attention to combo point timing and usage in most competitive builds, and a majority of competitive builds tends towards more criteria affecting its APL than in MoP or WoD (i.e., greater complexity in decision-making) and stricter burst windows once a given string is fully setup (no more decisions to be made at that point, just execution).


7+ for any competitive build, and that's leaving out damaging mobility skills.


11-12 for the meta build.

By all means, it could be boring to you even when having higher apms and many specs requiring a whole lot more considerations than just adjusting string lengths (pretty much BLM only) and/or overclocking/underclocking a static rotation (mostly just SAM)... but your estimations are grossly out of touch.

A geared SAM could likewise consolidate its combos and play in single-target with 4 buttons and do better than terribly, but you wouldn't exactly call that the button count for the job, would you? So why the false or at least massively skewed narrative for your point of comparison? Beast Mastery is the only spec that's anywhere near to your estimations and it has always been that way, intended as a purposely easy/forgiving spec -- not just since Legion.

Ret paladin is literally just spamming crusader strike and blade of justice (and they nerfed art of war) with wake of ashes and templars verdict mixed in....its the most basic of basic and the class has been boring since legion. There's no real nuance to any of the classes in WoW. They are all the spam 1 or 2 skills over and over with some other stuff mixed in. Its one of the reasons I play classic over retail. Legion outright ruined WoW for me and if FFXIV ever pulls that BS and does a massive ability purge I will never play this game again.

[ForsakenRoe]

Ret paladin is literally just spamming crusader strike and blade of justice (and they nerfed art of war) with wake of ashes and templars verdict mixed in....its the most basic of basic and the class has been boring since legion. There's no real nuance to any of the classes in WoW. They are all the spam 1 or 2 skills over and over with some other stuff mixed in. Its one of the reasons I play classic over retail. Legion outright ruined WoW for me and if FFXIV ever pulls that BS and does a massive ability purge I will never play this game again.

BLM is literally just spamming fire4 and thundercloud procs with despair and xenoglossy mixed in....its the most basic of basic and the class has been boring since SB. There's no real nuance to any of the classes in FFXIV. They are all the spam 1 or 2 skills over and over with some other stuff mixed in.

NIN is literally just spamming Aeolian Edge combo and Trick Attack at 60s with Bhava and Raiton mixed in....its the most basic of basic and the class has been boring since HW. There's no real nuance to any of the classes in FFXIV. They are all the spam 1 or 2 skills over and over with some other stuff mixed in.


See how easy it is to be overly reductive about this stuff? I don't believe this, of course. But the point is, the two games are not exactly comparable, as WOW has 'less buttons, more procs' and FFXIV has 'more buttons, less procs'. You mentioned Art of War resets for Blade already, but you also have to manage Crusade's stacking haste buff (trying to get the highest possible stack count in the window), Final Reckoning for a 50% bonus damage window, Execution Sentence for a Wildfire-esque 'dump your damage in this tiny window' CD, Empyrean Power to make your AOE spender Divine Storm be a gain in single Target over Templar's Verdict, trying to make sure you don't overcap on Holy Power when you use Divine Toll or Wake of Ashes, etc etc. IDK how the class was in Legion, but that time was a full reset of all the class kits, so I assume it was like how SMN is now. Problem is, we're now 3 expansions past that. Stuff's been added again.

Also, some classes had a talent choice in a row that was passive compared to the active 'extra button' of the row, and in some cases, removed a button from the rotation entirely, like Demon Blades on Havoc DH or Devastator on Prot Warrior. You're not thinking of the button count after choosing the 'all the passives so my button count is as low as possible on purpose' choices are you?

[Shurrikhan]

Ret paladin is literally just spamming crusader strike and blade of justice (and they nerfed art of war) with wake of ashes and templars verdict mixed in....its the most basic of basic and the class has been boring since legion.

What you're describing are the interactions around Holy Power, which have been the case since Holy Power was introduced to the class, not just since Legion. Legion merely traded a previously class-wide CD reset for Art of War (Exorcism) for a spec-specific one (Blade of Justice) while slightly amping Auras in place of Seals. I greatly preferred WoD Retribution, but it wasn't particularly more complex than Legion Ret, especially in PvE.

Ret centers around min-maxing spans of opportunity through minimizing waste uptime vs. performance while retaining later sync with macrorotational elements (Execution Sentence, Crusade, Seraphim, Holy Avenger, etc. -- all more numerous than before). It caps resources quickly, and gambles often but deliberately. Learn to min-max it, rather than sticking to just the Icyveins barebones, and you'll find it's far from "basic of basic," unless nearly every XIV job would fall even lower. Otherwise, you may as well say that BLM is skill-less and offers zero nuance.

removed a button from the rotation entirely, like Demon Blades on Havoc DH or Devastator on Prot Warrior

What's fun about these two examples, moreover, is that both play more complexly for having removed that button. On Protection Warrior, it obliges one to track their auto-attack timer and to calculate the risk of wasting a Shield Slam reset by hitting another GCD just before an AA goes off. On Havoc Demon Hunter, it obliges offensive mobility usage that then frequently requires knowing to where the mob will be moved next and when the next mechanic would actually require its raw mobility (and from outside of enemy hitbox, without damage, to reach, or available from within it), both of which have a hell of a lot more cognitive load than an actual pure filler attack like Demon Bite or Devastate (and which Crusader Strike, as a CD with multiple available procs, is not).