Please stop removing Damage Over Time effects from every job, add more complexity

[Shurrikhan]

DoTs serve one main function - they allow a very high potency attack to be placed within a rotation, but because the damage happens over a period you're discouraged from spamming it.

This. They're soft-CDs, that also happen to interact interestingly with target count and involve the tracking of time-to-kill (or, next-uptime-span). In terms of mechanical depth, they manage a ton of interaction for how simple they, themselves, are.

that makes me even happier that they're removing dots. every job having to refresh a debuff every X seconds makes the game incredibly boring.

Fair enough.

I'll just likely never understand how having something more, that conflicted with nothing and was about the least intrusive form of rotational anchor one could possibly have, could result in gameplay feeling less to anyone.

PS: MNK and DRG still have dots

Your point, though? If we removed main CDs from most jobs, I doubt anyone's reaction would be "Well, A and B still have them!" If whatever element of complexity was enjoyable to most players and has been removed, that some jobs still get to experience vestiges of it is not a satisfactory answer to "I preferred having more."

[Melethron123]

Your point, though? If we removed main CDs from most jobs, I doubt anyone's reaction would be "Well, A and B still have them!" If whatever element of complexity was enjoyable to most players and has been removed, that some jobs still get to experience vestiges of it is not a satisfactory answer to "I preferred having more."

i'm willing to bet that DRG has a much more busy rotation now than it did in HW

[RyuDragnier]

i'm willing to bet that DRG has a much more busy rotation now than it did in HW

Less busy, actually. Back in HW you had flank and rear positionals you had to do, else you lost a LOT of potency, and Fang and Claw and Wheeling Thrust were completely random on which one you would get, so you were constantly having to prepare to move. Plus Heavy Thrust was still a thing and you had to get a flank positional to get that sweet damage buff from it. And that's not getting into certain other hells DRG had to deal with back in the day...

[Shurrikhan]

i'm willing to bet that DRG has a much more busy rotation now than it did in HW

Less, actually (less positioning, less tracking, less decision-making).

But that's beside the point. Phlebotomize didn't prevent Lance Mastery II any more than Heavy Thrust did (which coexisted with our 5-step rotation).

Plus Heavy Thrust was still a thing and you had to get a flank positional to get that sweet damage buff from it.

Technically, that part, like Impulse Drive giving combo progress only on rear attack, was removed before Heavensward (replaced with only the damage bonus, and with ID's positional being moved to Chaos Thrust). But, those positionals were a far larger portion of potency than they are today.

[Mikey_R]

Less busy, actually. Back in HW you had flank and rear positionals you had to do, else you lost a LOT of potency, and Fang and Claw and Wheeling Thrust were completely random on which one you would get, so you were constantly having to prepare to move. Plus Heavy Thrust was still a thing and you had to get a flank positional to get that sweet damage buff from it. And that's not getting into certain other hells DRG had to deal with back in the day...

HW has less positionals over the 10 step GCD than SB and later, 40% for HW as opposed to 50% for SB onwards. You can say, yes, you lost more potency, but in regards to being busy, potency is irrelevant as you either go for the positional or you don't. You could argue with the addition of True North, that makes you more busy as it is something else consider whilst doing a fight.

Also, Heavy Thrust and Impulse Drive mandatory positionals were removed in 2.45:

https://na.finalfantasyxiv.com/lodes...cf56b933b99601

You still get the Heavy Thrust buff even from rear and Impulse Drive is now guaranteed to continue the combo, with the rear positional now being moved to Chaos Thrust for a potency increase.

As for which one is busier, I'm not going to comment, however, I don't think it is as cut and dry as you are making it out to be.

[Shurrikhan]

HW has less positionals over the 10 step GCD than SB and later, 40% for HW as opposed to 50% for SB onwards.

Tangential, but... is that really the best way to look at positionals though? If your every skill had positionals, but every one of those was Rear, would you say that the job is significantly more complex for it than a job that has to move between Rear and Flank, even if less often?

That's not to say that movement is necessarily very large, but I would think the more appropriate metric would be the likely degree of movement required at any particular point.

At present, we use Any-Any-Rear-Rear-Flank-Any-Any-Any-Flank-Rear. We move twice per 10 GCDs. And it's entirely reliable, with no particular points where you'd have to look down instead of just automating it.

Back then, we had Flank[1]-Any-Any-Rear[2]-EITHER[2-3]--Any-Any-Any-Any-EITHER[2-4]. Per 10 GCDs, we could end up having to move up to 2 to 4 times, and with only the time after the skill's actuation to see which way we'd be moving following each 3rd-Step skill.

That's the same floor (if you somehow lucked out and always got WT after Chaos Thrust and F&C before Heavy Thrust), but a higher ceiling, of movement, and with greater urgency.

I would think that would be, then, the job with a greater emphasis on positionals even before accounting for the greater potency at risk per positional.

* Those positionals follow from Heavy (Flank), Impulse, Disembowel, Chaos (Rear), F&C (Flank) or WT (Rear), Phlebotomize, True, Vorpal, Full, F&C (Flank) or WT (Rear).

[Mikey_R]

Tangential, but... is that really the best way to look at positionals though? If your every skill had positionals, but every one of those was Rear, would you say that the job is significantly more complex for it than a job that has to move between Rear and Flank, even if less often?

...

As I stated in that post, I wasn't concerned about potential complexity arising from how different positionals interact with each other and potential movement, just the pure fact of, is this GCD a positional or not.

HW Dragoon was more complex in regards to positionals just for the pure fact they are RNG, you couldn't plan and so you had 2.5 seconds to see which one procced and move if needed.

However, it also isn't necessarily fair to just look at positionals and how they interact with each other, fight mechanics will also play a role in how you interact with positionals, can you do the mechanic whilst still doing positionals, or, do you need to use True North (which wasn't available in HW).

When you try and bring everything together and take into account every detail, it isn't a simple question to ask. However, since the initial comment was just, which one has more positionals, then all that matters is, is this GCD a positional or not, forgoing any deeper questions that might arise by digging deeper.

[Melethron123]

Less busy, actually. Back in HW you had flank and rear positionals you had to do, else you lost a LOT of potency, and Fang and Claw and Wheeling Thrust were completely random on which one you would get, so you were constantly having to prepare to move. Plus Heavy Thrust was still a thing and you had to get a flank positional to get that sweet damage buff from it. And that's not getting into certain other hells DRG had to deal with back in the day...

so... they had the same skills but fewer OGCDs, AKA: less busy