Inevitable Job Simplifications?

[Renathras]

...

Factually untrue.

When determining "room for growth"...okay, first of all: DEFINE that, please. In concrete terms. What does "room for growth" mean?

The most baseline you could play SMN (and still be playing the game) would be to press only the Ruin 3 button over and over again. That's the absolute braindead baseline.

Above that, you have using DWT, 3 Primals (in a random order), FBT, 3 more Primals (in a random order).

Above that, you have adding in your oGCDs and Ruin IV.

Above that, you have putting all your oGCDs into burst windows.

Above that, you have use of Primal based on boss mechanics (e.g. movement or non-movement).

And above that, you have optimizing Primals into burst windows, shifting based on fight mechanics.

And finally, you have some of the more esoteric things like spellspeed threshholds (which changes your actual rotation cadence and APM), if you really want get into the guts of perfect for each fight.

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You presented a "graph" with no data.What is the axis on the left? 20 units of...what? "units of complexity"? What is "1 unit of complexity"? What is "60 units of complexity"? It's a meaningless picture with no data or factual basis.

So I'll ask again: DEFINE that, please. In concrete terms. What does "room for growth" mean?

[Valence]

That's the absolute braindead baseline.

And for the love of Hydaelyn and/or Zodiark (whichever cult you ascribe to more, of course ) - stop using the term "braindead". If you can't see how that poisons the well of literally any discussion ever, sit back in your chair, consider how you'd feel if people incessantly called things you actually find fun and enjoyable braindead, and then realize that you should stop doing it.

Like are you for real?

[Ggwppino]

Factually untrue.

When determining "room for growth"...okay, first of all: DEFINE that, please. In concrete terms. What does "room for growth" mean?

The most baseline you could play SMN (and still be playing the game) would be to press only the Ruin 3 button over and over again. That's the absolute braindead baseline.

Above that, you have using DWT, 3 Primals (in a random order), FBT, 3 more Primals (in a random order).

Above that, you have adding in your oGCDs and Ruin IV.

Above that, you have putting all your oGCDs into burst windows.

Above that, you have use of Primal based on boss mechanics (e.g. movement or non-movement).

And above that, you have optimizing Primals into burst windows, shifting based on fight mechanics.

And finally, you have some of the more esoteric things like spellspeed threshholds (which changes your actual rotation cadence and APM), if you really want get into the guts of perfect for each fight.

.

You presented a "graph" with no data.What is the axis on the left? 20 units of...what? "units of complexity"? What is "1 unit of complexity"? What is "60 units of complexity"? It's a meaningless picture with no data or factual basis.

So I'll ask again: DEFINE that, please. In concrete terms. What does "room for growth" mean?

1 hour: Oh I need to press all 3 buttons that light up, the order is not important
2 hour: Oh I need to spam my basically single oGCD when i use my buff
3 hour: Oh bahamut is sooo stronkk i think i buff there
4 hour: Im a fucking pro with this class, wheew, now? What other class do I play?


the hours change according to the player of course, but the smn offers this, that's it.

It doesn't offer a mechanic that can be explored well by going months and improving yourself. With the old smn, to learn to play it, I'm not saying in a perfect way, but well, it took me weeks and when things fit right in, I was very happy, and I rejoiced when I was right and i didnt using too many ruins 3 or not wasting my resources (ruin 4) or taking everyone with the buff or not forgetting the dots.
I used 5 ruin 3 instead of 4? Did I let the dots expire? Wasn't I making the most of ruin 4 or tri disaster? It doesn't matter, in normal-extreme content there is no dps check or it is very low. There is no need to perfect the rotation. There is no need, just have fun as you see fit. But the job gives you the opportunity to improve yourself, because it gives you ample room for personal growth. Clearly the more you demand, the more the complexity increases because you have to think about more things and pay more attention.

Now everything is phoned, has autopilot, like gatchas. I mastered the new smn the first day I was at 90, which is the second day of pre-release. I mastered the smn that the game wasn't officially out lol.

[Dahlinea]

Just answered your own question...

Having a basic spell set as baseline (Ruin II and Ruin III) and a lot of other GCDs and OGCDs means that the job was modular enough for you to actually move around pieces of abilities within the rotation to match the mechanics of the fights while trying to maximize the usage of your main basic hardcasted spell and preparing Further Ruin stacks and aligning oGCDs till Bahamut/Phoenix come from CD.

Now what's the baseline for new SMN? You have a forced Summon Bahamut to do to access your 3 legos, where 2/3 pretty much trivializes cast positioning since you can Swiftcast Slipstream. And talking about Slipstream, unless your tank loves to waltz around the battlefield during the fights, bosses' target circles are so big in this expansion that you'll rarely miss any of the ground AoE ticks. You have to also cast Ruin IV that's on a timer and it's also instacast, cast a Ruin III (if you didn't forgot to press your buttons for 2 seconds looking at the scenary) and proceed to Summon Phoenix to keep pressing the same button six times and Energy Drain (to hold Fester for Bahamut, but that's way too advanced isn't it?). From there you're forced to repeat. Sounds great, right? But all that is straightfoward and the game enforces this general path on you.
That's the baseline for new SMN which is also your near optimal rotation. That's why the graph shows a horizontal line indicating how the complexity of SMN pratically doesn't change from its entry level to its best performance, aside from meager tweaks along the rotation. Things that you had to think about and choose carefully during fights are now enforced in a general path with little to no meaningful choices, given the insta cast nature of most of current SMN spells that you HAVE to use regardless of what situation you're in.

The primal optmization is debatable but if you hold your bursts you'll be left casting only Ruin III, the thing you called braindead before.
There's nothing esoteric about spell speed. It always changed the APM of caster jobs that rely on cast/recast times, and that was true for old SMN too. The difference now is that new SMN basically doesn't have any casted spells so they moved the effect of spell speed recast times to Summon Bahamut/Phoenix and their spells. You just put the minimum amount of extra SS to be able to cast 6 of their spells, the rest going to Crit and Dhit, and just call it a day until/if the devs decide to change the modifiers of these stats in middle of the expansion, which will affect all jobs in such cases (if there was any case like that in past, I don't remember)

Also... Hello there! It's your favorite cultist again trying to make you see the light!

[Renathras]

1 hour: Oh I need to press all 3 buttons that light up, the order is not important
2 hour: Oh I need to spam my basically single oGCD when i use my buff
3 hour: Oh bahamut is sooo stronkk i think i buff there
4 hour: Im a fucking pro with this class, wheew, now? What other class do I play?

And if you get to that point? BLM: Exists. RDM: Exists. Basically EVERY OTHER JOB IN THE GAME: Exists.

It doesn't offer a mechanic that can be explored well by going months and improving yourself.

Not every Job NEEDS that. In fact, it would probably be very unhealthy for the game if every Job DID take months and months to get anywhere close to optimal with.

With the old smn,

We're not talking about Old SMN.

We all agree Old SMN shouldn't have been removed from the game.

lol, fair enough. Viable, then? Or optimal, perhaps...

Also... Hello there! It's your favorite cultist again trying to make you see the light!

Who are you?

I feel like I should be saying something like "But for me, it was Tuesday" here...

The graph isn't data. It's a meme. Come back when you can turn that into actual data. Again, what's the Y-axis in that "graph"? It's nothing, because it's a meme and has no actual meaning. That graph isn't a valid "argument".

Yeah, the Devs need to seriously reexamine stats and builds, maybe in 7.0. But that's not the problem (of discussion) here. Nor is New SMN not having higher optimization. Again, no arguments yet why it's necessary for it to, only people saying it "should".

Far as I can tell, there's no objective reason that New SMN NEEDS to be more complex and ISN'T working as it is. All the data suggests that it's working as it is and is very well liked and used by the community. It seems odd to insist so strongly that it's bad and broken given that. While popular doesn't always mean GREAT, it generally does mean at least somewhat GOOD. There are reasons perfume doesn't come in "skunk" and "rotten cheese" or "cow manure". Because, it turns out, things that are pretty awful...tend not to be very popular or well liked.

There's an extremely vocal minority that hates it, but in terms of play numbers, it's the Caster players are gravitating more to than the others.

PART OF THAT - I think - is because RDM seriously needs some potency buffs to be above Ranged levels of damage. But that doesn't change the fact people would probably still pick SMN more, and that BLM is still being sidelined as soon as people get the chance.

I again contend that the problem isn't New SMN, and that New SMN is fine. The problem is that Old SMN was removed - something no one's contesting, so I assume we all more or less agree on that point, at least.

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Oh, and for reference, in case anyone is somehow misunderstanding the Hydaelyn/Zodiark remark...it's because "for the love of God" is somewhat less fitting in a FFXIV discussion group, and there are two prevailing - for lack of a better word - cults in the mythos, those being that of Zodiark and ARGUABLY Hydaelyn. Religion doesn't seem QUITE the right word for it. But take from that what you will.

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But hey, at the end of the day, I'm not going to convince any of you because you aren't basing your positions on data or metrics or even player behavior and apparent preferences...and the Devs aren't listening anyway. So I guess it doesn't matter in the end... /shrug

I'm still putting in my vote for Green Mage Caster next Job added..

[Dahlinea]

...

And you're failing to understand that no Colourful Mage the devs introduce will stop people that play SMN to complain about its "no effort" state (because "braindead" is offensive, apparently, despite being the right word for the job right now).
People been justifiably complaining about this trend of the devs in over simplifying job core mechanics for some time now. Now we get an extreme case of a job being reworked and getting all its verticality removed in the process and FOR ABSOLUTLY NO REASON. This is no accessibility at all, for those who want to claim it as such, and people already gave examples of jobs that feature a better a idea of accessibility, like DNC or RDM. The job needed fixes to pet actions' responsiveness and an eased opener, which nearly every old SMN player agreed about it.
The devs created the right tools, the good animations and you can see traces of feedbacks the players gave for the job in the past, but the execution of the job they put out is terrible, the baseline being is your near best approach to the job, leaving no room for players even trying to extract more of it besides one or two tweaks.

You call our arguments subjective but all you did up until now is using your biased conceptions of what the jobs should be as something objective. You're being subjective as hell for the most part of this thread as well.
Also player count doesn't mean anything. If it did, BLM would've been reworked to be a braindead job ages ago.

Who are you?

I don't know man. You said I was like a cultist or something back there.

[Renathras]

[EDIT: Actually going to put this up front because I think this IS important and a perspective often missed a year on:]

And you're failing to understand that no Colourful Mage the devs introduce will stop people that play SMN to complain about its "no effort" state (because "braindead" is offensive, apparently, despite being the right word for the job right now).

Then the complainers are hopeless, I guess. /shrug

The irony to me is, there were some pretty famous SMN players that played SMN in the media tour and were saying it was what they've wanted SMN to be forever and were so happy the Devs took the feedback and made it. So this cuts both ways.

An example here, and the first person I saw review SMN for EW, Larryzaur, SMN since ARR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-uk-4VaET6A

And another: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNG1QNQPlNE

And note from all the comments: Not everyone just hates the Job, either. A lot of people were stoked both before it came out and after.

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Each role should have Easy, Mid and hard/complex job when it comes to it's rotation.
And they all should be rewarding when hitting your buttons correctly. But the hard/complex jobs should reward a bit more. Either in damage, utility, etc.

The problem I have is there is that they're simplify jobs while also doing the same to the encounters.
And yes I know they have ult for hard encounters but that doesn't fix the job part.
There should be a flow of easy to hard content and easy to hard jobs. And they aim the easier one towards new players so they're not overloaded.

I agree with this with the caveat that it should always be utility. Something we've learned is that Jobs that don't meet the damage are blacklisted, so that's no go. Harder Jobs can't be rewarded with extra damage, but they CAN be rewarded with extra utility.

In ShB, SMN was harder than BLM, but didn't do more damage (it actually was balanced around doing a little less - they kept nerfing some potencies whenever it would nose passed BLM), but it offered some healing, a party damage buff, and a battle raise.

The balance should ensure that everything is VIABLE for clearing the content (damage), but allowing harder to execute things some additional perks for that difficulty - but with the caveat that when not played well, they'd be outdamaged by the lower skill Jobs.

There are a lot of people playing smn in casual content. And it would be strange otherwise, the titan's ass is so beautiful.

You know what?

I'm just going to stop here because I think this is something we can all agree on.

[Though I'll note - no, I don't get a "sense of fulfillment" by mastering a DPS rotation. My sense of fulfillment comes from clearing encounters and executing mechanics, not from spending hours on a target dummy to the point I remember my rotation just like pressing 1111 and it's become second nature. I get zero satisfaction from DPS rotations in a general sense. None. I like some spell/attack visual and sound effects - using 3x Atonement on PLD feels good to me because I love how visceral the sound of the slashes is "Shunk....SHUNK!!", and likewise Double Down, the big red X and massive explosion sound...but I could not care less that it was "perfectly executed" or not. I like how some abilities combine together like Recitation, Adloquium, and Deployment Tactics on SCH, for example, but because of how they combine, not because they're a "rotation". I derive no joy from that aspect at all, no. Jobs like SMN allow players who don't care for that "feeling" to still execute them at optimal levels and do the actual things they enjoy with them. This is why one should exist in each role...but no more than one, because more isn't needed. The rest can be as complex as desired and it doesn't matter. I've played most Jobs in this game, executed "the perfect opener"...meh. It's not hard, it's just...boring. Tedious.]

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We aren't going to agree overall, and that's fine. My point's been made:

There's no reason that all Jobs DO need to have high skill ceilings AND there's nothing wrong with New SMN.

We agree that Old SMN should be in the game in at least some form, and we agree that Titan's ass is majestic.

incomprehensible tirade

Yawn.

Not interested.

You refuse to answer simple questions and just make personal attacks. When you're ready to try answering the questions, we'll continue. Here are the questions, with nothing else here since you get so easily distracted and take any advantage to avoid them, so I'll give you nothing else this time:

Why must all Jobs have a skill high skill ceiling?
Why is that important?
Why is that necessary?

You call our arguments subjective but all you did up until now is using your biased conceptions of what the jobs should be as something objective. You're being subjective as hell for the most part of this thread as well.

No, I've justified my reasoning. I've said WHY there should be an easy Job in each role. I've cited statistics that we DO have access to - that is, data/facts. Neither of these things are subjective.

Meanwhile, when I ask for the WHY from anyone on the other side, I get either shoulds (from the more cordial and rational people) or insults (from the less cordial and rational people). It'd be one thing if I just said "there should be easy Jobs", and left it at that. But I haven't. I've said why it's important, what an easy Job in each role accomplishes, and cited data showing that the playerbase in majority also wants easy Jobs to exist. The only should that I then apply is that we shouldn't do something that the majority would find disagreeable.

Also player count doesn't mean anything. If it did, BLM would've been reworked to be a braindead job ages ago.

Where did I say playercount means Jobs need to be reworked?

I'm saying if a lot of people are playing a Job, they PROBABLY enjoy it and it's PROBABLY not hot garbage.

I don't know man. You said I was like a cultist or something back there.

Source?

[Valence]

like DNC or RDM.

( I agree with your post )

I guess I'm gonna be pedantic while we're at it, but in my eyes the only saving grace of DNC is its priority proc system that constitutes its sole source of mechanical intricacy. Everything is extremely straightforward, even the base procs out of the burst, where one just needs to press what lights up without thinking much. Where it becomes a little bit more involved is during the burst combined with Feather charges and Devilment that will fill up your OGCD slots and need to be cautious not to overwrite (flourish + Fan Dance III), while very randomly filling the gauge and asking the player to keep an eye not to overcap esprit. Besides that burst every 2 minutes though, there is literally nothing more to do than for current SMN, with no casts to boot.

DNC actually is a good example of jobs that have lost a lot of ceiling and complexity since the last expansion and 6.0:

1) EW 6.0: No more AoE melee standing independently from their single target counterparts during bursts with flourish, which is obviously to make room for all the new GCDs to cram into the window, so it makes sense, but on the other hand it removed a lot of melee uptime shenanigans (not that it would have mattered much with those new hitboxes anyway *cough*).
2) EW 6.1: Standard Step "standardized" enough so that its potency isn't much of a huge gain compared to the standard core skills which makes drifting it or the whole rotation less of an annoyance and makes the job more fluid and flexible (and a LOT less annoying on the sks thresholds to respect, it used to be even more obnoxious than MCH).
3) EW 6.1: No more proc overwrites from flourish, which is a huge downgrade in complexity since you had to make sure before that to keep enough esprit to fill the last GCD before a flourish in the case of not having any proc to spend.

Now, I'm actually pretty happy for 2) because those long cd skills are extremely annoying and tend to work against their own rotations and sks, and not too miffed about 3) either, but when it comes to all of those, they remove a lot of ceiling from the job to a point where the only thing it has more compared to SMN is procs and charges.

Just a lot less happy with the loss of the old hybrid single target/aoe melee procs that imo were a lot more engaging than just getting a button to press (starfall) when I use devilment, which has been introduced to keep DNC comparable to BRD in terms of damage since BRD got made comparable in terms of raid damage support with Coda, but feels extremely uninvolved to me (much like Blast Arrow and all those finishers).

( yes, BRD may have been gutted as well for a lot of reasons in difficulty while a lot of its problems got fixed, but it still retains tons more of little intricacies to juggle with than DNC )