Inevitable Job Simplifications?

[tearagion]

As for the study classes - the problem is when Jobs are complex enough that everyone has to read The Balance to figure them out. Ideally, players should be able to just read their tooltips and basically figure out the optimal rotation. It might take a little thought, but the information should be there and the optimal rotation should be understandable by doing so. No Job in FFXIV really does this, but some come closer to others.

Every job is VERY easy to figure out an efficient rotation on, you don't need the balance to clear anything in this game. Even BLM you can get through pretty much every encounter in the game, with good contribution, just by playing standard and using triple/instants for movement. You say that you think a mix of simple and complex jobs would be ideal, but then the "ideal" scenario you actually describe is a mix of braindead and simple.

[Renathras]

Every job is VERY easy to figure out an efficient rotation on, you don't need the balance to clear anything in this game. Even BLM you can get through pretty much every encounter in the game, with good contribution, just by playing standard and using triple/instants for movement. You say that you think a mix of simple and complex jobs would be ideal, but then the "ideal" scenario you actually describe is a mix of braindead and simple.

Not at all. Tell me, without consulting the Balance, what's the optimal way for RDM to use Manafication? Is it on CD or not on CD? Should you hold it for Embolden? Should you hold Embolden for your melee combo? In the opener, do you use Swiftcast and Acceleration? How may Accelerations do you use? Which do you use first, Fleche, Contre Sixte, Corps-a-Corps, or Engagement/Disengagement and WHY? Which of Engagement/Disengagement do you use, and also WHY? How many weaves do you fit and where/why do you use them there? WITHOUT going to the Balance, can you answer these questions?

The answers, btw, are:

Manafication on CD is considered optimal provided you're ensuring you aren't overcapping mana to do so, Embolden on CD (unless the boss becomes untargetable) to keep lined up with party buffs is optimal, you should NOT hold Embolden for your melee combo, you use Swiftcast AND Acceleration (but only one) in your opener, at the same time, and only one is consumed for the first cast (generally Thunder) and has priority over Swiftcast for the spells it apples to (Thunder 3, Aero 3, and Impact) over Swiftcast being consumed, and you do this to ensure you have a proc of the non-finisher (Holy/Flare) mana type so when you use your combo and use the lower mana finisher, you leave the melee combo with both procs up, and you only use that one Acceleration in the opener, you use Fleche because it has the highest damage and has a short CD, and using it early will allow it to come off CD JUUUUST before/as Tincture ends, to get it under that extra buff damage. Contra Sixte, Corps-a-Corps, and Engagement are next in that priority, and you use both stacks of Corps-a-Corps and Engagement, and use Engagement over Disengage specifically due to the latter having animation lock; in the ideal opener, you use both after the third hit of your melee combo, so the opening of distance is irrelevant, it's strictly an animation lock argument. You can only weave single abilities between melee abilities because of their shorter GCDs, as doing double weaves would cause clipping, which is why the ideal is to double weave after the melee combo itself and in between the spell part of the finisher; Enchanted Redoublement has a longer GCD, allowing for two weaves. This is, collectively, why your oGCD use is Fleche after 1-, Contre Sixte after -2, and then double weave Corps-a-Corps/Engagement after -3 and again after the Flare/Holy, then Fleche as it comes off CD, weaved in after the Doublecast spell, third one of those (sixth total GCD) after ending your burst combo/Resolution.

JUST reading the tooltips and not the theorycrafting site, you have no way of knowing basically any of that. Even the theorycrafters didn't get those things from reading the tooltips, they got them from running various simulations and test runs on target dummies. And keep in mind...RDM is one of the least complex and most simplistic Jobs in the game, and there's already a lot going on there you can't get "on your own" in a realistic way for most of the player base. Maybe you are secretly Commander Data, but the vast majority of the game's players are not.

AND this is just the opener. While openers are pretty intense and important, that's not even the whole of the rotation, such as mini-burst phases that some Jobs have (like NIN at 1 min marks), reopeners after a boss was untargetable, and the filler phase, which for some Jobs is pretty simple, but even there, you need to think in terms of what's coming up and when and thinking ahead based on that. Again, NONE of that would your average player, or even most above average players, get just from reading tooltips.

No, it's not "a mix of braindead and simple". It's asking that some things not be convoluted to the point you need myriad spreadsheets and AI and/or add-on tool assist to figure out.

A lot of people love to say how "braindead" Jobs are...while using add-ons and theorycrafters to do the work for them to figure it out. At that point, all you're doing is very basic priority system understanding and dumb monkey muscle memory on a target dummy for a few hours. Of COURSE things are going to seem easy and braindead when you have other people and illegal crutches doing all the work for you.

Some people LOVE to say this because they seem to think it makes them look good somehow, but it's really inane.

.

Most average players - indeed, even most ABOVE average players - cannot come up with optimal rotations or openers on their own, and they are, in fact, needed to reliably clear some content. And I'm not even getting into preferred melds/stat priority or breakpoints or any of that stuff, which is an added layer on top of that.

When you do your own theorycrafting and play without benefiting from any add-ons (note, this includes using add-ons for theorycrafting or referring to research done by people that do - the Balance folks use add-ons to determine their optimal stat allocations and rotations), THEN you can talk about Jobs being "easy to figure out" and "braindead".

[Lyth]

Why is the rotation the focal point, though? Once you've established what you need to do under target dummy conditions, every fight can be reduced down to a variation of that ideal scenario. It doesn't matter whether your rotation has four steps or forty. If rotations bore you now, they would have equally bored you in Heavensward.

The key differentiator has always been fight design, not job design. If players are uncertain whether it's possible to obtain more uptime or not, then you have an actual performance differentiator. And that generally happens when you are given interesting positioning and movement mechanics. The perceived difficulty change after Heavensward has nothing to do with circular AoEs (?) or loss of pet management (???) as was suggested in the OP. It's a trickle down effect from the fact that bosses are designed to position themselves and move in a scripted and predictable fashion to assist you with doing damage.

Somewhere along the line over the past few expansions, fight design feels like it has shifted away from a Trinity based design where boss movement is controlled dynamically by your team (i.e. tanks) in response to less predictable fight conditions to an ARPG type design where the fight designers script the events and movement completely. But job design hasn't reflected that change. Every fight is a target dummy fight, interspaced with standardized intermissions. If boss movement is going to be predictable, then there needs to be a lot more forced movement, not static phases of hitting bosses while watching their cast bars tick up. This also means that players need more interesting movement tools to keep up with increased movement demands.

[Valence]

I enjoy a lot of game genres. My main issue with the current design is how scripted many fights feel. That can be exciting during prog when you're still figuring things out, but it feels like there's no real decision-making that occurs mid-fight. I like variable elements, be they branching mechanic patterns or proc-based actions. I agree that combos are uninspiring design and have nothing to do with player technical ability. But the main purpose is to keep your baseline keystroke pattern less tedious over many hours of play, not to keep you challenged.

I think interesting movement abilities is the way forward, because they add visual/spatial technical challenges to fights that are traditionally only about timing and nothing more.

I mean you're probably complaining more about the static fight design than job design at this point tbh. Positionals are/were probably one such elements that you're looking for when it comes to dynamic movement. I'm not saying that they shouldn't try other things like that, mind you. I wouldn't mind having to move more as a rphys player myself (although i'm not sure how besides having melee options like old DNC perhaps).

I just do feel that they keep removing more and more proc and priority based mechanics in jobs, and procs should be one of the ways to go to generate those decisions on the spot. This is literally what makes me play DPS jobs. I don't like melees due to the aforementioned design (I hate positionals with a burning passion, and that's just subjective taste). At least melees still have branching combos, even though they've been simplifying those too (Ninja lost the dot branch, etc), but recently they've been actually adding combos without any branching steps, which I find absolutely baffling (MCH and RPR). What is even the point of those when they could just be reduced to a single pvp button that does the same thing? It's just 3 buttons that are bloating your hotbar for very little gain in complexity. One simple thing they could do to make DRG more engaging is adding a small rng element between Fang and Wheeling.

One of the things that make rphys in their original design interesting for me to play was the heavy reliance on random elements and on the fly adjustment, especially during their bursts. BRD may have recurring patterns but every burst will never be the exact same combination and pattern. DNC as well although this one is a lot less finicky and more lax in the order of buttons. Old MCH was actually demanding into quickly identifying specific pre burst patterns in order to know what sequence to go for as well. I guess BLM still retains some of this, but it's a caster and not the main focus of it, and when you actually want to get into it you get into actual unintended voodoo like transpose lines.

[Valence]

What if you like simple Jobs and they tune the Job you like to complex?

What if they're all made complex and then people that like simple have nothing?

Yes, it's literally the same issue and I already talked about it earlier. I wouldn't like enjoying a simple job as a casual and suddenly see SE make it literally unplayable for me because too complicated, but I can only imagine because I'm on the other end of the spectrum (they made the job I like absolutely braindead). But you're right, there is no difference between those two cases and I do feel they're wrong and they should never happen. This is why people talk a lot about skill floors and ceilings.

You really don't need to read the balance in this game to play a job decently, you just need to press all your buttons, even if unoptimally. It's always been like that, but I do agree that some jobs can require some explanation and can seem very obscure to a lot of players (like BLM for newcomers). You can ask other people to offer advice into how to play a job better without having to read all the mega advanced guides on the balance.

Or are you trying to say that everything should be easy to figure out immediately in solo for anybody without guides? That sounds extremely dull and limited in scope... And where do you put the bar? For some players having more than 3 or 4 buttons is already a problem, and I'm not blaming them for it. They enjoy the game as well and clear dungeons and casual content at their pace and have fun, but reading this I feel you're trying to lower the skill ceiling so hard that it's frightening on its own.

[tearagion]

aaaa

Cleared TEA on RDM without consulting the Balance for how to play my job, didn't parse before you ask, and am happier for it. Also it was really easy. Do you really need to consult the Balance to know you should stack buffs when you can? And that you should saturate cooldowns, preferably in the buffs? Can you not do basic arithmetic to find out if holding a cd for a buff that's coming soon is a good idea? Mechanical limitations and nuance you can just pick up intuitively while playing the game. I know this because I did.

Did I do the perfectly optimal rotation? No, but to pretend that thinking back to that last pull and reasoning, for example, that you'll be able to get a bit more damage by trying to slidecast that long movement so that you can realign fleche and contre-sixte with your dual-cast later is some arcane magic that can only be divined by the high council of the RDM mentors on the Balance is frankly insulting. Your argument really only begins holds water for BLM, which is ironic because BLM is the single best designed DPS for enabling simple, and extremely complex play to both clear any content.

A lot of people love to say how "braindead" Jobs are...while using add-ons and theorycrafters to do the work for them to figure it out. At that point, all you're doing is very basic priority system understanding and dumb monkey muscle memory on a target dummy for a few hours. Of COURSE things are going to seem easy and braindead when you have other people and illegal crutches doing all the work for you.

Don't project at me ty

When you do your own theorycrafting and play without benefiting from any add-ons (note, this includes using add-ons for theorycrafting or referring to research done by people that do - the Balance folks use add-ons to determine their optimal stat allocations and rotations), THEN you can talk about Jobs being "easy to figure out" and "braindead".

I already have for BLU before

[Sparkthor]

Why is the rotation the focal point, though? Once you've established what you need to do under target dummy conditions, every fight can be reduced down to a variation of that ideal scenario. It doesn't matter whether your rotation has four steps or forty. If rotations bore you now, they would have equally bored you in Heavensward.

It's exactly my thought, but I wasn't able to express it this way.

On a side note, i think people judge HW as harder than EW is because ressources today are well know and almost instant. Also fight balance is way better and we didn't have any more dps gear locked content (Like Alexander 12 was). Hell, even P8S got nerfed even if people pass it. And today we got guides for every Savage fight the day of the release. And i think this is very impactful on how the game is perceived today : as most people don't even try to understand fight but just copy/paste guides, if they don't use mod to do it for them.

[Rilifane]

I just do feel that they keep removing more and more proc and priority based mechanics in jobs, and procs should be one of the ways to go to generate those decisions on the spot. This is literally what makes me play DPS jobs. I don't like melees due to the aforementioned design (I hate positionals with a burning passion, and that's just subjective taste). At least melees still have branching combos, even though they've been simplifying those too (Ninja lost the dot branch, etc), but recently they've been actually adding combos without any branching steps, which I find absolutely baffling (MCH and RPR). What is even the point of those when they could just be reduced to a single pvp button that does the same thing? It's just 3 buttons that are bloating your hotbar for very little gain in complexity. One simple thing they could do to make DRG more engaging is adding a small rng element between Fang and Wheeling.

I've always been more fond or priorities and random elements over static and strict rotations. The former allows for a more dynamical adjustment to your own skill and the current fight while keeping it interesting long-term as you can never completely predict what you will get.
BLM is one of the last remaining classes with a solid amount of priority/ rng elements that make an actual difference and isn't just a "feels bad" via Thundercloud/ Firestarter procs and mana ticks while still allowing you to play a straightforward standard rotation and perform well enough with it. But if your rotation is 12345 with 6 and 7 kept on cooldown then your rotation is 12345 with 6 and 7 on cooldown and that's set in stone. No ifs and buts (barring very, very few niche cases). While on BLM if you want to push it, you will have plenty of opportunities for "if mana tick occured before halfway through the cast then you can do this" or "if you got a proc you can also do this". The dps gain for optimizing is tiny which is why it's such a valid option to not optimize. The skill ceiling exists, it keeps it interesting but there's no pressure to do it since it could easily result in a dps loss if you're not comfortable with it. And that is imo the ideal scenario.

Another downside to static rotations is that from the lack of meaningful interaction between skills you need to have more buttons for the same level of engagement than a rotation that has varying degrees of priority/ rng in it.
Keeping a buff up with a 123 every 30s isn't meaningful interaction between 2 and 3, you do it because it's always the only way to go about it and it doesn't modify your gameplay. A chance of a skill resetting the cooldown of another skill does and there is a more constant need to pay attention and react as opposed to "I know I have to press 123 for 30s and then I press everything else in this exact order". It's generally better for button economy and the wasteful use of hotbar slots that SE keeps going for ("this skill... but aoe!", "can only be used after this skill... but on a separate button!") makes the whole issue even worse.
They're putting the car in front of the horse by going "Too many buttons, we need to prune, let's delete this skill" instead of looking at why they feel they have to add so many stale fluff buttons in the first place. And you wouldn't need 5 buttons with a flat "use on cooldown, it's free potency" if the other existing buttons had meaningful interaction, give choices and leave a skill ceiling.

Fight design alone isn't the solution imo.
I agree that the static fight design quickly turns incredibly stale but I also think a very large portion of the engagement should come from the class and not just the encounter. Because you will inevitably end up playing your class in content that doesn't provide a high level of engagement through mechanics, like fates, treasure maps, solo duties, old content, overworld questing etc. and then what? Everyone is condemned to be bored to tears when doing that content?
It also partly solves the outgearing content problem because even with gear trivializing mechanics and giving you a lot more leeway for standing in bad, the class itself will still keep you busy enough.
Always reacting appropriately doesn't have to result in massively higher dps gain either. As long as this skill ceiling exists.

[Payadopa]

Every job is VERY easy to figure out an efficient rotation on, you don't need the balance to clear anything in this game. Even BLM you can get through pretty much every encounter in the game, with good contribution, just by playing standard and using triple/instants for movement. You say that you think a mix of simple and complex jobs would be ideal, but then the "ideal" scenario you actually describe is a mix of braindead and simple.

That's how I do it. I just read my tooltips and give my training dummy a good beating. Lo and behold, I "do my job quite well" (or so my friends tell me as I'm on PS5) and bosses die. Unless you are doing world first etc you don't have to make it more complicated than that. I even use Stone, Sky, Sea or whatever it's called in EW. lol

[Rilifane]

That's how I do it. I just read my tooltips and give my training dummy a good beating. Lo and behold, I "do my job quite well" (or so my friends tell me as I'm on PS5) and bosses die. Unless you are doing world first etc you don't have to make it more complicated than that. I even use Stone, Sky, Sea or whatever it's called in EW. lol

I agree that you don't need Balance/ other tools to do fairly well, it's mainly for the small details that make the difference between good and optimal that you'll likely be lost without some outside source.
But to be fair, a lot of people say things like "I can keep uptime perfectly well without balance telling me to!" and then you look at their kills of something and notice they're sitting at something like 85% uptime, misaligned buff, missed several uses of cooldowns, have several broken combos and so on. They'll not suddenly do better because they also read on balance that uptime is important, that's not the point here.
The point is that people thinking they're doing well and proudly announcing that they know everything they need to and do well without any outside source (and often tend to subtly put others down who do use these sources) have been found to be a far cry from that more often than not both ingame and on the OF etc.
It has resulted in many people being sceptical when someone says "Nah, fam. I play my class well without any outside source. Lol who needs balance, just use common sense hurrdurr" even though you can definitely do pretty well by just reading tooltips. Not optimally, no, that's a number cruncher thing and you'd have to do more than just glance at a tooltip. But well? Definitely.