Inevitable Job Simplifications?

[Lyth]

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While everyone will have their own personal experiences of what they consider to be 'easy' and 'difficult', I don't think this is something that the dev team should ever offer an 'official' commentary on. The problem with the mindset that 'this job is officially harder to play, therefore is more powerful' is that you have the dev team officially sanctioning a balance discrepancy. Which means that players aren't going to want to play or take the officially sanctioned weaker job.

The entire point of having job variety is to let players find a job design that clicks with them. As an example, I personally don't find any of the current healers or magical ranged dps jobs to be interesting. But if you offered me the right job design, like a melee-based healer (Quarterstaff please) or perhaps a DoT focused Void Mage, I wouldn't mind swapping roles for an expansion just for the experience. It keeps the game fresh when you're playing it for 10+ years. If I had to main tank for another expansion I would have definitely burnt out.

Now if you turned around and said this same job is 'officially' easier to play as per the dev team, and therefore will always be underpowered when played optimally, it might as well not exist. Why would I invest my time into a job that the dev team is deliberately making inferior to the alternatives? I generally ignore the discussion around 'complexity' because it's rubbish and only gets trotted out by players to defend balance inequities when they aren't confident in their own ability to perform in a fair fight. But when you have a dev team supporting those inequities it's significantly worse, because you know those privileged jobs will never lose their advantage.

This is also the crux of why players get annoyed at the sub-role balance within DPS. Physical ranged players don't stop and cast spells, so therefore they are 'officially' intended to be 'inferior' to magical ranged. This is such an absurd design mindset. I think the proc design on ranged jobs is actually really interesting. But why would I ever waste my time playing a sub-role that is officially sanctioned as weaker, and only gets brought to fill a mandatory slot on the roster?

I understand that not everyone wants to necessarily challenge themselves. But that's why performance within a job is always variable. And that's why you design job mechanics such that you're still rewarded for playing effectively, but not overly punished for making mistakes. You could argue that there's a case to make for Talent Trees if you want to create a 'less punishing' version of a job that has less inherent risks in the rotation, but either way it should be an internal option within the job that lets you still be competitive if you want to be.

[Valence]

The only reason I still stick to rphys is because I like the gameplay of its classes that remain true to its original premise (proc based, priority, freeform-ish), and which is also why I dumped my favorite job of all times to the dumpsterfire where it belongs (mch). I tried melees but they're not my cup of tea. Casters as well, don't interest me the slightest. Yet I am consigned into not playing a dps role, but a 1% party bonus role.

These two are functionally the same thing. It's about your spatial position on the map. Otherwise we'd be playing a text-based game with combo buttons.

I don't think we had the same idea of what movement refers to, but then I'll clarify and say that in my mind, it means dynamic motions where the focus is on the spatial translation. Positioning implies a focus on where to stand.

Both are tied, but they're not the same to me. A gameplay that asks me to constantly jump all around like a bunny, I don't want to. Melees can have it if it makes them happy, that was the whole point of positionals. A gameplay that asks me to go here or there for specific purposes, like solving mechanics (fight related), or to trigger melee (like on old DNC), it interests me already more. I'd even shove in the latter the old AoE patterns we had on MNK and some other jobs, where you constantly had to adjust the positioning of the character to adjust to the pack of enemies, whereas positionals are just an artificial mechanic to generate motion for no real purpose.

If we both have the idea that motions for a clear, non artificial purpose are good and desired, but that motions for the sake of moving are not desirable, then we're in agreement though. As I said above, as a rphys player I'd actually like having to move a little more, and I do feel that most of those jobs could benefit from some melee or mid range skills for example, which are only for AoE currently. Could even get inspired from pvp and have the occasional skill (not your damn filler mind you) that is affected by range, but this would need a better UI and indicators to not be a pain.

[Valence]

I think the issue is that being "busy" doesn't mean difficulty when a lot Jobs designs are needlessly busy in the 120 minute windows, but outside of that they're just pressing a 1, 2, 3 filler.

I even think variety extends beyond rotations, I don't think Jobs should just only serve a purpose of being there to bring a slightly different rotation and cosmetic look, at least I would enjoy something that brings new options or something else.. But It feels like even expecting a Job with at least a nice rotation feels like I'm expecting too much. Raid buffs aren't even interesting you just click this 120 buff and yay. I don't think the current raid buff system works in favour of making jobs stand out unless they're Bard, Dragoon, dancer or Astro.

DPS jobs have always managed more or less to keep a relatively unique structure to them, although some definitely share some core traits, but for tanks and healers it's always been a problem and it's not something especially new that came magically and recently.

WhM and SCH were two very different healers since the dawn of time, and when AST got released, in spite of having the dual sect option, it still shared most of its core toolkit with WhM, where every heal could be replaced with the ones from the other almost 1:1 except for the few OGCDs they had. Tanks have shared the same core basic combo branches since day one with some flavor sprinkled on top. They all had the power combo and the aggro combo, with a dot branch and/or a buff/debuff branch. Like healers, the core was utterly the same thing, and the flavor was located on the additional toolkit, and this hasn't changed much. The introduction of DRK and GNB doesn't break the pattern, and SGE is just another SCH in disguise with a different flavor.

On raid buffs, it's been an actual peeve of mine. We used to have a lot of them being unique and interesting, like Foe Requiem that lasted as long as the BRD had MP remaining (or could be shut down on demand). It actually brought a ton of party teamplay and planning, and a good bard player could adjust when to use it to match other buffs. Hypercharge was cd based but could apply on both turret modes (damage or mp regen), and battle voice also applied on manasong (and now it's just one of those extremely hollow raid buffs on cd). This is what rphys used to be about, compared to the support boredom we have now.

( Make us use our MP pools again damnit )

I am okay with the new Radiant Finale that actually requires more than just a cooldown, but they could do away with the actual cooldown that serve literally no purpose but to make it rigid without any need. I am okay with devilment because it's not just a +X% damage generic raid buff. But as far as the rest goes? It's bland.

[Rithy255]

My main issue is Melee DPS, on the surface they're "pretty" different and even have different rotations when you consider something like Monk vs Dragoon, but i Just find them really? Uninteresting in what they bring to the table and actual differences in playstyle.. This is beyond the fact that fights were designed around melees having super easy uptime, where unique Jobs like Ninja having a really short raid buff was interesting to me, The ranged uptime it could get was interesting, now it feels like those aspects don't really matter, think 1. Making range more value again, it was a mistake to give melees practically no struggles with uptime 2. Make a melee that's maybe just totally different from the others... Maybe even a proc based slightly RNG melee would be pretty cool.

Casters & Phys ranged, are actually generally pretty well designed and varied all things considered, I do think SMN/RDM should be slightly higher, especially RDM, BLM should be above current melees, but in general they feel so vastly different to me compared to melees despite there being 5. With Phys ranged, you got nice support elements and completely varied rotations, that feel totally different from one another at least I think something like a Machinist vs Dancer they both play so differently to any melee vs each other, on top of adding small utilities to the party.


With Tanks & Healers, Tanks generally are in a slightly better state (from my perspective), but their needs to be more Varity Shadowbringers warrior was really fun for me, despite being a "ez" job I loved the way it's Short CD were two separate abilities both with good use cases, I also liked having more then one thing tied to gauge. Paladin Is a example of a tank that could be made into something more interesting with a "defensive gauge" having more useable utilities, Dark Knight could stand out again as a "risk vs reward" tank.

Healers Like Astro vs white mage, they both feel totally different to play, I also agree that sage/scholar are basically the same job, I honestly think scholars just outright a better job due to speed boost. but yeah I can't say either one stand out to me. 7.0 should revamp healers.

I think raid buffs are mainly interesting when they interact with the jobs core gameplay or theirs a choice, targetable raid buffs such as astro cards feel interactive (Despite being made simple over time), You actively have cards that will benefit more with picking the right person at the right time, it's not a 120 raid buff that you press and forget about. I think while you make a good point about physical ranged being made more boring and less supportive is a good point, though I feel like Phys ranged will still be more interesting then melees ever could hope to be currently... That being said I like the idea of bard (phys ranged in general) being more active with it's supportive buffs.

[Valence]

That's the problem with melees in general, their additional job unique tools make them unique, but their base combo patterns are all similar, and while it's not on the level of healers with their gcd heals, it's not that far off. I'm also all for more proc based jobs in general. Combos are unappealing, especially with so little or no branches those days. Could just replace them with a single pvp button to reduce bloat and add new fun toys, and we would be better already.


Casters are very diverse yes, and that's good. SMN however, has suffered from the sqenix axe of butchering that MCH went through the past expansion because apparently it's easier to redesign from scratch than fix what's broken, especially when redesigning from scratch is intended to stay at a level so basic that it's literally braindead (SMN) or bland (MCH). Rphys are different from each other, yes and no, because BRD and DNC are actually very similar jobs when it comes to how their bursts play out. Fortunately, their job mechanics are different enough to keep them apart (mostly due to the very unique bard song system). MCH is a travesty and I don't even want to get into how bad and nonsensical that design is.

On mitigation, I'll admit that the recent buffs were truly needed for rphys and I actually appreciate this. However, unlike in the past, everybody and their mothers have mitigation to bring to the party (even melees and casters with addle-feint, and addle-feint is good on a short cd). Tanks and healers now all have a crapload of party wide mitigation tools as well, and RDM even has magick barrier. It's stopped for two expansions to be the relatively exclusive realm of rphys to bring that kind of party support, and while I think it's a good thing that everybody has to chime in when it comes to mitigation, it also removed one of the fundamental aspects that made rphys unique.

[Mikey_R]

That's the problem with melees in general, their additional job unique tools make them unique, but their base combo patterns are all similar, and while it's not on the level of healers with their gcd heals, it's not that far off. I'm also all for more proc based jobs in general. Combos are unappealing, especially with so little or no branches those days. Could just replace them with a single pvp button to reduce bloat and add new fun toys, and we would be better already.

I hope you aren't advocating for every job to be proc based? If you are, then you need to realise that there are players out there that do enjoy the more rigid combos, so yo uneed options for both.

[VentVanitas]

That's the problem with melees in general, their additional job unique tools make them unique, but their base combo patterns are all similar, and while it's not on the level of healers with their gcd heals, it's not that far off. I'm also all for more proc based jobs in general. Combos are unappealing, especially with so little or no branches those days. Could just replace them with a single pvp button to reduce bloat and add new fun toys, and we would be better already.

Don't touch my MNK combos, thanks.

It has the opposite problem actually. The fundamental structure of the job in its GCD loop is the most unique thing it has while its other aspects like Chakra and Blitz... not so much. Normally, I would count other things such as Six Sided Star but uses for it in EW so far have been very scarce outside of the typical "last attack before boss goes intangible/is dead."

[Lyth]

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Sure, let me clarify.

In a traditional 'trinity' design, tanks are designed to either proactively or reactively reposition the boss in order to ensure that the party can continue to safely and efficiently do damage. Sometimes this is by moving a boss out of hazards, and sometimes this is by repositioning the boss in a way that lets players swap off of another target back to the boss without losing uptime. As dps players, part of your skill is in anticipating how your tank will act (including in cases where you're teamed with an inconsistent tank) and positioning yourself in a way that maximizes uptime. This sort of fight design reached its peak in Heavensward but doesn't really exist anymore because the inherited game code has problems with snapshotting and executing boss actions.

In an ARPG design, you have little to no control over boss movement, but you rely on animation tells to make predictions about how to position yourself to optimize your damage output. It's still all about anticipation, but you're less reliant on having a consistent and competent tank to guide movement. As melee, that may mean that you know the exact second when the boss rotates to perform an action which may mess up a positional, or as ranged it may mean that you've identified the one pixel that you can stand in that let's you cast through the next two mechanics. If you want to push the player harder with this type of design, then you need more complex timings from the boss. And to be able to respond to that, you need the player to have access to more movement tools that let them reposition in subtle ways without having to stop performing actions.

The problem at the moment is that FFXIV is straddling these two fight design styles. If the former was the chosen approach I would go back to tanking in a heartbeat, because that's what I enjoyed about the role. If it's the latter, I'm probably going to enjoy melee the most. The problem is that you have such long periods of downtime between mechanics when you're just unloading into the boss, such that all roles feel equally underwhelming. This is why I think that a lot of the frustration comes down to fight design. If you can comfortably reduce a scenario down to target dummy conditions in your head, you've solved the fight. Rotational changes aren't going to fix this. Movement actions open up possibilities for more uptime, which in turn lets you push the player harder to maintain it.

[Renathras]

I hope you aren't advocating for every job to be proc based? If you are, then you need to realise that there are players out there that do enjoy the more rigid combos, so yo uneed options for both.

This, I think, is the key:

Options for players.

And the "option" can't be "play this thing you hate the way you hate it OR be bad and either unable to clear content or dead weight on other people dragging you through it". That's not an "option". Besides, if everything's the same, people hate that. Homogenized classes is one of the most complained about things across all MMOs.

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Don't touch my MNK combos, thanks.

It has the opposite problem actually. The fundamental structure of the job in its GCD loop is the most unique thing it has while its other aspects like Chakra and Blitz... not so much. Normally, I would count other things such as Six Sided Star but uses for it in EW so far have been very scarce outside of the typical "last attack before boss goes intangible/is dead."

MNK is actually really fun just because of how different it is, but it's different in a way that is SMOOTH, not clunky or unnecessarily complex. Like, it's GCD filler rotation is, what, 21 GCDs long, but it just flows so well.

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MCH is a travesty and I don't even want to get into how bad and nonsensical that design is.

I feel like we just may disagree on things.

Like...I find MCH really fun. It's the ONLY Ranged that I like playing. BRD is frustrating with the feast or famine procs and priority system being all over the place, and DNC.......I just hate DNC with a passion.

MCH, on the other hand? The Job is fun, abilities feel impactful, there's a priority system but it's pretty understandable and feels good to execute, the burst feels satisfying and high paced, and the base rotation is there for any time you'd otherwise have less to do or be bored. It just works on so many levels. It's easily the best designed Ranged in the game right now now that Hypercharge has a charge system.

I'd even say MCH is the ONLY good Ranged Job in the game right now in terms of play and feel. It's the only one that I at all enjoy. The others I'm leveling in Frontlines because of how much I dislike them.

I'd say this is a case of "Understand what what you like is not universal, and some things need to be made that you won't like to appeal to others". I have no problem with BRD and DNC being Jobs I don't like, even though archer is one of my favorite class fantasy/archetypes in gaming and the fantasy genre. But BRD in this game is for players that aren't me. MCH is more for players like me. Everyone wins.

It's already kind of what we get and it's literally what has RUINED rphys for the past two expansions.

Not...at all, actually. The problem with Ranged is that the entire SUBROLE was suffering a damage tax, not because they were easy or hard to play. Hell, RDM and SAM were easy, too, but were allowed to do more damage in ShB, and SAM in EW. That's a tuning issue, not a complexity one.

And, strictly speaking, I mean within each role there should be a simple, moderate, and complex one. Caster did this in both ShB and EW successfully (more successfully in ShB, but whatever). Melee also does this, with SAM in ShB and RPR in EW being pretty simple, NIN or high optimization MNK being complex, and everything else being somewhere in-between. So it clearly does work. ForsakenRoe talks about AST vs WHM in SB and neglects to point out WHM actually had a lot of problems and AST offered far higher output - the numbers being different, not the complexity being different, is why WHM was blacklisted from groups. If people blacklisted "simple" Jobs, then SMN wouldn't have been the most played Caster in Omega Protocol and Dragonsong Reprise. And it was the most played in both. And in Omega, it's not even CLOSE (in DSR, RDM is closer to it, but there's still a gap there, and RDM is considered the second easiest anyway)

and being shoved a braindead model down your throat on a job you love is one of the worst feeling I've had the displeasure to experience, and I've been wandering around looking for other jobs that 110% click with me since then with no real success. I'm pretty sure the opposite would also be true, where you're a player that struggles more with difficult rotations, and get shoved a complex model down their throat with little accessibility... Fortunately that latter case is less and less possible because accessibility of most jobs has been really eased over years (which is a good thing).

Yes, This cuts both ways - having a clunky convoluted mess of "high skill ceiling complexity" forced on people is even more alienating. If your Job is made easy, you can still play it, at least, even if you enjoy it less. If your Job is made unplayable convoluted, you have to abandon your Job entirely, it's not even an option at that point. That makes it the worst of the two.

Yes, but it varies on Job and content.

In general, I'm also opposed to big changes on Jobs, especially from one type to another.

Like I love New SMN. It actually FEELS like a Summoner and really has nailed the class fantasy, and the rotation is both smooth as butter and incredibly satisfying to execute. But the thing is, there were people that played Old SMN - the Frankenstein monster held together by duct tape and hope - that really loved it to death with the class fantasy of being a DoT/Plague/Green Mage. And that was ripped away from them with nothing given in return, even though Old SMN could honestly have been split into two Jobs, a SMN and a GRM, and actually work.

But those people were robbed of something and not even given something comparable as compensation. That just hurts everyone.

See, the community really has a problem with the damage and performance mindset (fortunately nowhere yet near to WoW, but it's following the trend), especially in casual content where it's always about "carrying bad players" and "bad players wasting muh time", you'd literally be preaching to the choir here. But not tying your job performance and results to damage, especially at least on DPS jobs, is absolutely unrealistic and wishful. That's literally THE satisfaction you can take out of playing them well.

I think this comes down to the individual. Many people don't get satisfaction from doing rotations well or big damage numbers. It's why a lot of people don't play DPS Jobs or play support-leaning DPS Jobs, because they don't care as much about that. They don't get "THE satisfaction" from it.

Others, on the other hand, do.

IMO, good game design gives each type of player something they can play. For example, GNB was made for people that like more DPS focus and big numbers when they play correctly. It was designed from the ground up to appeal to those types of players but be a Tank option so players with that mindset had a Tank Job they could play/a Job within the Tank role they could enjoy. It's not for everyone, but it's for those people. Maybe other people like GNB, but that isn't the option presented. GNB is geared towards the rotational complexity (more technical than complex, but whatever) minded player, and if you aren't that kind of player, the Devs are basically saying "Sorry, but hey, there are other Tanks that we have in the game that are made for people like you and we hope you'll try them out and maybe enjoy them."

Players who love GNB likely aren't going to enjoy WAR, but that's fine. Players who enjoy WAR likely aren't going to enjoy GNB, but that's fine. Some players really care about the aesthetic and push through their playstyle preference feelings while others make their decision on playstyle. But the thing is, those are choices, which are good, even if people aren't perfectly happy. Are there some people who say "I only want to play GNB gut it's too complex so I'm quiting the game" or people that say "I only want to play WAR but it's too simple so I'm quitting the game"? Maybe there are. But far less than if EVERY Tank was WAR or EVERY Tank was GNB just with different aesthetics. That would probably annoy far more people in the end.

Healers have the opposite problem where NONE of them are (any longer) designed to appeal to players that like a lot of rotational complexity. The problem isn't that ALL of them aren't, the problem is that NONE of them are. The problem isn't that there are easy rotational Healer Jobs. The problem is they're ALL rotationally easy, meaning players that want clunky, barely playable Jobs because they define their self-worth in mastering bad controls don't have a Healer they can play. IMO, they should have one. They just shouldn't get all of them. Moreover, it would be really bad for the game if they did because the Healer exodus would make HW and SB's exoduses look like a walk in the park.

If you were saying that healers should take satisfaction in a well planned or executed healing, or clutch saves, or whatever makes them tick, then I'd be inclined to agree. I don't play healers for their DPS rotations (especially in their current state lol). I know a lot of healers that enjoy healing, and when they meet some savage content, they're left flabbergasted by the lack of healing skill expression, where their kits are literally 90% about healing tools.

Mhm. Agree with this.

But that's not DPS jobs.

Didn't say it was. My statement was about classes in general.

Though as a rule, most successful MMOs have at least one "easy" DPS Job. Largely for that reason - Devs know that some people play with their friends, and friends playing together is good for the longevity of MMOs, so having "that one class" that anyone can play well tends to be good for the game. For quite some time in WoW (or even still today), Hunters were the most popular Jobs. Part of this was because they could solo well, but part was because they were just SO EASY to play. In Vanilla, they were basically autoattacking in raids (early on due to the debuff limit and lack of good agro management tools; though Feign Death was theirs and arguably one of the best as long as it didn't "miss"). RDM was the simplest DPS Job in ShB and...the most played. SMN is now and...the most played.

The four types of MMO player - Achievers/Diamonds (people like you), Killers/Clubs, Explorers/Spades, and Socializers/Hearts - the last type in particular often requires this, but those people are also often the glue that keeps their friends paying subs. Likewise, Spades and Clubs don't care about complexity, they'll take it or leave it and are more concerned with what works. Achievers are...actually also the same: They want to achieve things, but don't always master their success by complexity. Some do, some are more interested in mastering boss mechanics and stuff like that than in mastering designed clunk. That is, SOME Achievers measure success by their mastery of clunk and technical class rotations, but others define their mastery by being able to master fight mechanics; some want both. But this is also why the super high end world-first players often include simple/easy Jobs in their clears. Far from shunning them, they see the value in having a slimmed down rotation while doing challenging content. Otherwise, every Caster clearing TOP would be a BLM and every Healer an AST/SCH team. (BLM and AST are actually the least played.)

While everyone will have their own personal experiences of what they consider to be 'easy' and 'difficult', I don't think this is something that the dev team should ever offer an 'official' commentary on. The problem with the mindset that 'this job is officially harder to play, therefore is more powerful' is that you have the dev team officially sanctioning a balance discrepancy. Which means that players aren't going to want to play or take the officially sanctioned weaker job.

Which is why I've never advocated they do more damage. I do the opposite. Frequently.

I was saying that their rotations should be different in terms of complexity. Their damage should be balanced to be about the same when both are played optimally. This means if someone opts for a complex Job and plays poorly, they'll do less damage than someone playing the simple Job more poorly. But what they're getting is a playstyle they enjoy more and find more engaging and fun.

I think Caster is the best subrole in the game right now because it legitimately does this for the most part by having three levels of complexity that are all viable. Downside is it is somewhat based on damage, which is why I think ShB honestly did it even better. SMN in ShB did comparable damage with BLM (which is why they kept nerfing its potencies... <_< ). The three difficulties from simple to complex were RDM < BLM < SMN. But what SMN offered over BLM wasn't higher damage; it was comparable damage with higher utility. In its hay-day, SMN was doing roughly equal damage to BLM (sometimes a bit more, sometimes a bit less) in ShB. But what it brought to compensate for what was absolutely a far more complex and difficult rotation was more mobility (DWT/FBT phases, 8 Ruin 4s and Egi-Assaults per 2 mins, arguably Ruin 2 substitutions if necessary), a party damage buff, a utility Raise (not as spamable as RDM, but still usable in emergencies), and some light party support from Phoenix healing and Excog-lite.

Players going for the more complex Job WERE rewarded, but not with more damage. They were rewarded with more utility, the value of which would depend on the player. RDM did less damage, but the gulf was smaller than now, I think, and it offered a combination of high amounts of utility (party damage buff, extremely situational healing, S tier combat raising) while also still having either the simplest or second simplest (after either DNC or BRD, depending on who you asked) rotation in the game.

Even in EW with it being not as good, the varied Job difficulty is still something the Caster role exemplifies well, it's just all weird now since RDM is way weaker than it should be, leading to SMN doing more damage while offering more utility AND being simpler to play. BLM is only competitive because it does much higher DPS...but it's still the least played of the three. Which is fine, it's there for people that want that higher bar.

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I think the issue with Ranged, SPECIFICALLY, is the Dev team KINDA designs them to be a fourth role type (Support), but won't actually commit to there being a Support role in the game.

So you have this weird case of "the DPS subrole that does less damage and does some support things...oh, but it's still TOTALLY a DPS. Oh, and one of them does less support and is damage focused. It still does less damage than any Melee or Caster, though. Because it's a damage focused selfish Job, but it's still in the DPS category, but in the support sub-category, because we don't have a Support just DPS, so it's a bad DPS that does less DPS because if offers support...but it doesn't offer Support."

It's in this weird limbo where Ranged are TREATED as if they're a fourth Support role (do less personal DPS but offer party buffs to allies), but because the Devs won't actually fully embrace that, you get this half-and-half nonsense that then becomes utterly absurd in the case of pre-6.3 MCH being trapped in the paradox of being a "selfish high persona DPS Job" in a "taxed, do lower DPS than all other DPS subroles" role.

(Seriously, they should just add a "Support/Yellow Icon" role, stick BRD, DNC, probably RDM, and maybe but probably not NIN in it, combine the rest into plain "DPS/Red Icon", have the DF work where it treats Support and DPS the same for the purposes of filling parties, and then actually MAKE THE JOBS WORK based on that instead of kinda/sorta/but also not shoe-horning them in other subroles...)

The problem with "performance within a job is always variable" is that it's not always VIABLE if the DPS gap is too large. If effective play is rewarded with DAMAGE - note damage, specifically; utility doesn't always incur this problem - then you are punished for making mistakes. On the other hand, if effective play is rewarded with non-damage utility of some form (greater mobility, better defense, more self-sustain, etc), then that is less of a problem since those things aren't strictly necessary but are often nice to have. For example, if optimal RDM play gave you tons more mobility such that a master RDM player could handle all the "spread, stand in towers, etc" type mechanics really well, this would be rewarding but not make RDM's that aren't perfectly optimal unable to clear content or a drag on their team. That is a case of rewarding effective play without punishing mistakes, because the additions you get for effective play may be useful but aren't mandatory, necessary, or what players decide party composition based around, but which high level players can flex to do things like speedruns or world firsts.

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i am both interested and slightly concerned at what this means. it sounds like it was a lot of hoops to go through to keep good uptime on that alongside your other skills.

It was.

And some people loved it, which is why I think it was good for the game.

Some people hated it, so the Devs up to that point had done a few things (1 was remove Cleric Stance - though to be fair, Cleric's problem was it was a WHM, then Cross-Class ability; had it just been a SCH ability and not cross-class, then the Healers could have self-selected and the problem would have solved itself) to make it a bit more functional. Then in ShB, they just got tired of messing with it and the constant complaining, seemed like.

I think it's good for the game to have different Jobs that play differently; vastly differently in some cases. That way, those players that enjoy those playstyles can enjoy them. I think the problem comes when those decisions start affecting balance and/or when people start demanding homogenization/having toys the others have that they don't. That is, when people insist that the harder Job should "do more damage for the more work" (even if they're literally asking for said more work) and/or when people demand stuff like every Healer should have a party Sprint like SCH or that some things should just be role actions so every Job in the role has the same "essential" ability (it's almost never actually essential...); those two things ruin it for everyone.

When the solution was "If you like DPSing and juggling damage abilities while Healing, play SCH, if you don't like those things and prefer more thoughtful and methodical healing, play WHM; they're both viable in content and the best parties have one of each", the game worked really really well (WHM and SCH being the only two healers in ARR). It was when we moved away from that that things began to break down and we had multiple crashes in the Healer population in various ways all the way up until...well, Endlwalker, ironically. But that may be because a new Healer Job being added.

...much as people say a new Job being added to a role doesn't boost the number of people playing the role, the data seems to suggest otherwise.

Jobs should have more variety in simple vs complicated, It's fine to have Jobs that are easier to play it's fine to have Jobs that are harder to play, I think the issue is that being "busy" doesn't mean difficulty when a lot Jobs designs are needlessly busy in the 120 minute windows, but outside of that they're just pressing a 1, 2, 3 filler.

Agree with this.

Disagree with "WHM should have...more damage buttons or something?"; WHM actually is tied for the most damage buttons it's had in the game's entire history. It has as many as it had in SB (or 1 more, depending on how you're counting) and as many as it had in ARR. I think it might have one less than it had in HW, but the one less was a situational ability that wasn't actually used in optimal gameplay. So WHM is, in effect, what it's always been. The bigger issue is that Healers all have so many oGCD heals now (in ARR and HW, SCH was the oGCD Healer and WHM was the GCD Healer; it still is with Lilies but not the rest of its GCD heals) that it's shoehorned all the Healers into this weird "apply your DoT, use your one other utility damage spell, spam your spam spell, when the damage spikes come in, pop 1-2 oGCDs and everyone will be at full health, then go back to spam spell".

If nothing else, it makes them all very samey.

Honestly (there's a thread in the Healer forum right now about Healers Then and Now), the real issue is SCH.

WHM and AST feel different to play (people that say they don't are only looking at their GCD cast heals, which neither uses outside of emergency fallbacks), though AST probably needs some work. SCH and SGE feel like clones of each other with different coats of paint and SGE being SLIGHTLY easier. But SCH is actually the most spamnuke (Broil) focused Healer (moreso than WHM is a Glarebot - I know, it surprised me, too, but the math doesn't lie, and FFLogs confirmed this)

Changing SCH back more towards its SB form would...probably make it a bit less played by people that like current healing, but would make it highly appealing to players that enjoy that complex playstyle. But moreover, it would also fix several other problems at once. SGE would no longer feel like SCH, and it would reduce how samey the Healers all feel. That should honestly be the first thing done in any Healer overall project. The next should be AST, since it's more distinct and doesn't have the overlap problem SCH/SGE does, but is THE MOST spamnuke spammy (Malificbot) of all the Healers. Though maybe that's the one to do it, given their Card sidegame, but if so, then THAT needs to be made more interesting like it was in SB.

WHM is arguably the Healer that is (somewhat ironically, given history) working the best right now. The one thing it needs is a ~60 sec damage mitigation button, since it's the only Healer that has less than 3 mits per 2 minutes on average over the course of a fight...having only the ONE.

[Valence]

I hope you aren't advocating for every job to be proc based? If you are, then you need to realise that there are players out there that do enjoy the more rigid combos, so yo uneed options for both.

I actually am not, and yes I know a lot of players that like the predictable nature of jobs and can't deal with those that are not.

I am actually advocating for more and more varied base filler systems, even though personally I dislike base combos. So far the game mostly runs on three types:

- Standard combos, some have branches, some don't. You essentially press a button, the next one lights up with 100% chance.
- Procs. Some have a chance to proc from the first skill of a combo (GCDs like refulgent arrow, RDM spells, DNC combos, etc), some have a chance to proc from job mechanics (OGCDs usually, and the most interesting and creative ones imo).
- Freeform. MNK is such an example, and SMN/BLM is also one. I like the freeform category because no matter the job, that base is very unique to them and follow unique mechanics.

Don't touch my MNK combos, thanks.

It has the opposite problem actually. The fundamental structure of the job in its GCD loop is the most unique thing it has while its other aspects like Chakra and Blitz... not so much. Normally, I would count other things such as Six Sided Star but uses for it in EW so far have been very scarce outside of the typical "last attack before boss goes intangible/is dead."

Yeah MNK combos are more freeform and not standard combos, so that's different. And I actually like blitz for the simple reason that it actually feels unique to me. Maybe it's not that far off from mudras yeah, but it still uses the base GCD combo as parts (unlike mudras) and in a unique freeform way. It actually makes the job rather complicated when you want to fully optimize and provides very high skill ceiling, which is probably a good thing for players that like that sort of thing?