Your Opinion on the Current State of Job Identity/Balance in 6.4?

[RaionKansen]

Ill just go down the list with my personal opinions:

DPS
All Melee DPS: Fine where they are. I'm a Sam main so I might be bias, but I don't really care when other jobs do like 1% more dps in some encounters on logs
Black Mage: Gud
Machinist: Finally close to where it belongs
Bard: Needs something special like a combat peleton on llike a 90s CD exclusive to bard
DNC: Fine as is although I never touched dancer after getting it to 90
Summoner: I don't have an answer for this, but you shouldn't be able to functionally one button macro SMN. Feels bland. Needs more integration with summoning primals in a certain order + maybe you could pick to glamour some primals.
Red Mage: Pays the VerRaise Tax and I think it should stay that way unless they make it so you cant.

Tanks: Remove Damage from Gap Close
Warrior: I'm kinda salty its doing the most damage atm while having some of the best mit and its party mit only being topped by PLD because PLD has Divine Veil + Passage
Paladin: I hate Goring blade the way it currently is. I like the atonement combo changes. Clemency sucks when compared to Oblation and Equilibrium
Gunbreaker: Aurora feels kinda useless. Otherwise, I'm bias towards liking how GNB is overall although I do kinda wish SKS didnt make the job into an optimization nightmare.
Dark Knight: Feels like there's not much reason to play it after the GNB and WAR potency buffs

Healers:
Astrologian: I don't know what AST needs but I dropped it as soon as I hit 90 because unlike all the other healers you are punished by the random RNG that is Astrodyne and Lord/Lady of Crowns
Sage: This job is so strong and convenient to play I think it actually makes me worse at other healers.
White Mage: heavily struggles in the mit department compared to AST
Scholar: I don't know how Aetherflow and Energy Drain still exist when Addersgal and Addersting is such an insanely better alternative. I don't have any reason to ever play Scholar the way it currently is

Additional Mini-Rant about healers:
Everyone complaining about healings thinking that adding more dots would improve the job don't really know what they want or what they're asking for.
You would just pog out during the announcement and then after a couple days feel like healing is no different and if anything is worse because you have to spend more GCD time re-apply dots which may conflict with mechanics and cause drifting.
The entire approach to encounters and damage would have to change for them to rework healers unless they just give healers combo actions and a rotation that magically heals up the party with some oGCD cooldowns for mits or topping up individuals

[Shougun]

Additional Mini-Rant about healers:
Everyone complaining about healings thinking that adding more dots would improve the job don't really know what they want or what they're asking for.
You would just pog out during the announcement and then after a couple days feel like healing is no different and if anything is worse because you have to spend more GCD time re-apply dots which may conflict with mechanics and cause drifting.
The entire approach to encounters and damage would have to change for them to rework healers unless they just give healers combo actions and a rotation that magically heals up the party with some oGCD cooldowns for mits or topping up individuals

I assume you're referring to old SCH love, in which case.. what is wrong with that? It is proof of concept it worked and those players like it, though the fairy obviously did a lot of lifting for healing (and is basically addressing your last bit too, magically healing up the party by simply existing lol).

In a way it feels like the people you're addressing with 'more dots' have then essentially addressed all your concerns, in which case I have no idea what you're addressing.. xD.

There are certainly a lot of issues with healing but there is no change that can be done without a lot of 'something' changing. Can't have gear, player skills, tank skills, and nerfs all pointing to healing be invalidated and make healers interesting for that content. Now it seems to me the obvious and easiest way to address healers therefore is just to give them 'more dots' (among other new actions), essentially give up the fight on 'heailing' and go into the other themes. Warrior healer is proven to be appreciated, shows SCH (and SGE to an element), so there is one side. The other side, that obviously warrior healer misses and where a lot of players who are like 'healing is useless' is the supportive players... So.. let them help the group by being supportive but still avoid that green hp go brr as a majority activity, as honestly healing in this game is just probably never going to be hyper* valuable outside of very hard content and of that really only 'new' hard content (so a small portion of the game). *Naturally if no healer the game would have some changes, but like.. you'd just see blue healers and maybe a few more RDM and SMN to solve it (not saying you can do current hard content without a healer, but you can definitely do it in current expansion MSQ / 'old' content that isn't savage and above).

If your kit is really only helpful for a small portion of the game (up for argument depending on your play style, if you're exclusively hard new content then.. /shrug), I think that describes healers upset over anything else- and any change will require many system changes.. I honestly feel it will take more system changes to make healing valuable than it would be to just give healers more group responsibilities outside of purely adding green health bars. Of course making healing valuable is actually an option, I'm just not sure where your confidence on giving healers more things to do isn't a valid solution (which is an open invitation to state why, not facetious)- given that a lot of complaints are nothing to do but oGCD heal and press one or two buttons for damage (which probably means they're not doing the hard content when they talk about that issue).

[Renathras]

I assume you're referring to old SCH...

I liked your first post in this thread, but couldn't disagree more with this one.

1) Not all SCH's liked the DoT focus. /raises hand

2) SOME players appreciate WAR, many do not. Many Tanks want to play a tank and not a healer. Many Healers want to play a healer and not a tank or a DPS. Making Healer Jobs into DPSers and telling them to go play WAR if they want to heal seems bad on all counts.

3) RaionKansen is right that "more dots" isn't the answer. At best, it papers over the problem of Healers feeling unnecessary in even current content. It doesn't actually fix the problem, it just lets them be even worse and more braindead (but SLIGHTLY less braindead) DPS Jobs. Say SCH got a 15 and 18 second DoT, one with a cast time, and an AF spender that did more damage based on DoTs. Is that really going to be more compelling for long? You're not hitting Broil as much...but you're not hitting it THAT much less often. If it makes up 80% of your casts now, it'll still make up 70% of your casts after the change, and it doesn't take a lot of brainpower to go "look under boss health bar, make sure it has my three DoTs on it before hitting Bane, repeat until AF all gone".

...at WORST, it just makes the role into worse DPS and alienates people that genuinely like healing into quitting the game or leaving those classes. If someone likes healing - and I mean "filling up people's HP bars - and not DPS rotations, then all "more dots" will do is encourage them to play RDM or possibly SMN or DNC instead, maybe WAR or PLD, or quit the game, neither of which is great for the game. Groups will start dropping Healers, as why take a Green Job that has the rotation of a Tank but does even less damage and brings nothing useful to the table when you could just bring an extra WAR and an extra DPS instead and clear the encounter just fine, and faster?

I do think there's some design space in making the Healer JOBS more distinct - SCH having DoTs and SGE having a combo rotation, for example, leaving AST and WHM basically how they are now; that might work - but "more dots" won't actually fix the problem, and even giving just SCH more and SGE a combo rotation won't really fix anything, it'll just steal some of the hyperbole from the people who want to be "dps-lite Support" and want to coopt the Healer role into being that when the Tanks are already that and they don't want to play those because they don't want "the responsibility" or...something.

4) If you're going to remove Healing from the game, you'd be better off just deleting the four Jobs instead of trying to change them into "dps-lite Support". You'd also need to make Jobs for the people that play them now that they might vaguely enjoy, meaning you'd need some DPS Jobs that have an automatic DPS rotation for the people that don't really care for DPS rotations, and that would just be stupid.

[Shurrikhan]

I liked your first post in this thread, but couldn't disagree more with this one.

1) Not all SCH's liked the DoT focus.

Sure, but was that because they disliked having soft-CDs and variable ppgcd costs of healing, and the added skill ceiling that brought with it, or because they occasionally had to look at the Target's Status Effects (Debuffs)?

DoTs' place in SCH gameplay wasn't just that they were debuffs, nor just that they were over time. They were integral to its offensive kit in numerous ways.

RaionKansen is right that "more dots" isn't the answer. At best, it papers over the problem of Healers feeling unnecessary in even current content.

Wait, so... we refuse all other options on the basis that they'll excessively raise the skill floor (to... what it was for the first 3 versions of the game / over 60% of its lifetime), leaving only the ability to make better use of downtime, which in turn we constrain on the basis that utility would be too situational or, if rDPS focused, bloated (AoE) or parser-demanding (ST)... leaving us with one tool that best allows for flexibility and leverageable depth together.

But somehow, even after having cleared all other possible solutions off the table, DoTs can't even be AN* answer???

*(Despite this goalpost shift of yours, few if any have ever made the claim that they must be THE sole answer, only at most the best of what remains.)

If you're going to remove Healing from the game, you'd be better off just deleting the four Jobs instead of trying to change them into "dps-lite Support".

What you're describing here is in no way suggested by what you're quoting, nor has almost ever been suggested except in jest or as a description of what healers, having so few responsibilities, already are --simplified/braindrained [green] DPS with a mostly noninteractive collection of abilities to be used according to a particular fight-specific script.

Even were the game to turn into the likes of GW2, though, how would simply removing 4 jobs in a tantrum, DPS or otherwise, be healthier for the game than revamping those 4 jobs to better fit that context?

[Absurdity]

Even were the game to turn into the likes of GW2, though, how would simply removing 4 jobs in a tantrum, DPS or otherwise, be healthier for the game than revamping those 4 jobs to better fit that context?

Funny thing about that, GW2 back-pedaled quite a bit on that whole "no trinity" design.

And even more funny things, GW2, the mmo that didn't have any healers initially, has vastly more interesting healer gameplay now than XIV does. I'd play Quickness Heal Herald over any of the XIV healers any day.

Exactly because they're not designed to just mindlessly fill health bars, you're primarily a support. You provide damage reduction, attack speed, cooldown reduction, crit chance, attack power and your weapon skills provide even more support on top of dealing damage.

Personally it's also about how little the combat has changed/evolved for the majority of classes from SHB to EW.

That's the big thing people tend to forget, it wasn't Endwalker that brought us this incredibly boring job design, Endwalker just continued what Shadowbringers had started. Endwalker's biggest sin is simply doubling down on it.

[Shurrikhan]

Funny thing about that, GW2 back-pedaled quite a bit on that whole "no trinity" design.

And even more funny things, GW2, the mmo that didn't have any healers initially, has vastly more interesting healer gameplay now than XIV does. I'd play Quickness Heal Herald over any of the XIV healers any day.

Exactly because they're not designed to just mindlessly fill health bars, you're primarily a support. You provide damage reduction, attack speed, cooldown reduction, crit chance, attack power and your weapon skills provide even more support on top of dealing damage.

Aye. But I chose that particular reference because it still comes from a pretty generalist/non-trinity-intensive place/intent... and still manages more integral support play. >.>

Like, if that is the terror at the end of the slippery slope that abandons those healers 'who just want to heal' (or, want nothing more complex offensively than Glare spam)...

[Tanis_Ebonhart]

Funny thing about that, GW2 back-pedaled quite a bit on that whole "no trinity" design.

And even more funny things, GW2, the mmo that didn't have any healers initially, has vastly more interesting healer gameplay now than XIV does. I'd play Quickness Heal Herald over any of the XIV healers any day.

Exactly because they're not designed to just mindlessly fill health bars, you're primarily a support. You provide damage reduction, attack speed, cooldown reduction, crit chance, attack power and your weapon skills provide even more support on top of dealing damage.



That's the big thing people tend to forget, it wasn't Endwalker that brought us this incredibly boring job design, Endwalker just continued what Shadowbringers had started. Endwalker's biggest sin is simply doubling down on it.

I mean, if it's so great and free... Why aren't more playing GW2?

[Shougun]

I mean, if it's so great and free... Why aren't more playing GW2?

I don't have a great answer, and could probably write a very long guess but, I would say that GW2 has a surprisingly large amount of really fun systems. I think my greatest annoyance is how delayed mounts were (which they fixed semi recently). Maybe most generically they don't tie and clean up things as well such that progression can be confusing.. I mean like must read a guide in order to make even half decent choices for many different things. Some of their shops are bewildering as a new player, with so many different currencies and items to do who knows what. Some items with INSANE ROI and then some with insanely terrible ROI lol. There are a few cash shop items that are huge reasons to why I had access to a lot of fun... unfortunately.

The combat visuals are meh but the feeling and building is pretty good, some of the jobs are insanely fun and feel like FFXIV's pvp but with build and customization mechanics. Mounts destroy other mmos in gameplay. FATEs / events are way better. The horizontal gearing is easy to catch up but has a lot of long term value- it is however insanely convoluted as a new player where you should do what. A lot of really nice QoL is cash shopped too though, and also convoluted. The seasonal events are also awesome. Account wide systems. Much better open world encouragement. Insane zone scale. Zone sync also makes it so you don't have a boring kit in early content.

Somethings off the top of my head.. I still prefer FFXIV for other reasons but if we somehow stole from GW2.. probably would be nice. For the next mmo it would be cool if they can take the best of FFXIV, GW2, ESO for some sort of action very rpg mmo. As FFXII (12) was used for some testing bed of the next mmo I hope FFXVII will be as too. Also helpful to be such so that FFXIV can exist without the next one taking too much space (entirely different combat style is a big difference).

[Absurdity]

I mean, if it's so great and free... Why aren't more playing GW2?

I don't know if this is supposed to be some kind of gotcha, but that is exactly what I'm doing when I want to have a fun open world or play interesting classes.

[Raikai]

I mean, if it's so great and free... Why aren't more playing GW2?

To me is a combination of loving the FF IP and knowing that XIV is highly referential to other titles, plus GW2 player graphics aren't very... good to my taste. They look kinda plastic-y and lifeless - not even mentioning how most of the cool armor sets are store bought and 1-piece ensembles. And somehow GW2 as a game system is even more unfriendly to roleplaying than XIV, which heavies a lot as well.