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

[GoatOfWar]

...Wait, you mean the role that barely needs healers anymore?

Warrior's powercreep set that standard. The only tank that was different was Drk, And I fully expect them to give them the same powercreep now that Warrior's damage is also the highest for absolutely no justifiable reason.

[fulminating]

Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darthk knight The Wise? I thought not. It’s not a story the devs would tell you. It’s a stormblood legend. Dark knight was a Dark tank of stormblood, so powerful and so healy he could use the quietus-abyssal drain loop to influence the damage to create life points… He had such a knowledge of the dark side that he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying. The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural. He became so powerful… the only thing he was afraid of was losing his power, which eventually, of course, he did. Unfortunately, he taught his apprentice everything he knew, then his apprentice killed him in his sleep. Ironic. He could save others from death, but not himself.

[Shurrikhan]

Old SCH was not NEARLY that dynamic. You used your DoTs on duration for refreshes, and Quickened Aetherflow was unreliable and often janky.

So you're again going to leave out Bane, the low duration requirements for instant-cast DoTs to overtake Broil, that its AoE spell was a (6s, in Stormblood) DoT, giving SCH higher simultaneous healing and damage in AoE situations... all to mention Quickened Aetherflow... which had nothing to do with DoTs outside of spending AF stacks on Bane?

"Moreover," - No, we haven't. Which MMO is that?

The majority of actions MMO with both melee and ranged classes, for starters. Sword and magic right alongside TPS/FPS elements.

I played up to the mid-20s

So the basis for your deduction that GW2 had no role specialization or 'Trinity' elements, however fluid... was that you rarely if ever party up, and didn't even make it to level 30, in a game that went to level 80 before its first expansion (though using alternate means of progression, a la Merit systems, thereafter)?

People largely just...didn't group at all, or only did so for the big FATE Boss things.

Because we do oh so much grouping up in XIV... and have such elaborate role interactions... pre-30? The... occasional Cure or... turning on tank stance and then using our 1-2-3 combo like a simplified dps?

Even at that level, though, if you actually went and grouped up with people in GW2 and started learning about their kits and yours, you'd find that skills have synergies that make for a far more than linear increase in efficiency when playing together well. A larger difference, even, than in XIV, short of being able to sustain truly massive pulls for your AoE spam (before tanks become self-sustaining anyways).

[Rolder50]

They are playing it because the job is so simple that you can macro the entire rotation into 1 button.

For anyone who needs the reference, this has actually been done: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BId-R_GKsNc

[Payotz]

What's your opinion on job identity right now? how's your main job doing? do you think Square is going in the right direction or do you still miss how your class(s) were in a past iteration of FFXIV? let me know

Can't really talk about the balance accurately in this tier cause I quit raiding after P8S/DSR so I'll just talk about identity.

Physical Ranged does not have a reason to exist. Period. It's a role that was meant to be a support DPS but have their support parts taken away and their tools completely non-functional in PvE.They used to be able to refill resources with Refresh and Tactician, they used to be able to give extra mitigation (on TOP of their own toolkit), their CC tools and the fact that they have free movement used to be the reason why they were brought into raids, as they used to be the ones who would kite AoEs out of the party(Superjump, Panto O11S), or kite adds to specific spots (T7 Medusa), and because it didn't need to be close, standing still to cast or to even move for positionals, it used to have one of the harder rotations to learn on top of having added responsibilities in raid with adds, AoE kiting and their own tools.

Now the role is just a shadow of its former self. It's now treated as baby's first DPS. Want to be carried through Savage? Oh aight, just go MCH. What's the role that has the least work to do? Oh Physical Ranged. What's the most boring role in the game? Yep, it's Physical Ranged (equal to Healer tbh). Its very reason to exist right now is the fact that you have to have them in the party because of a 1% Party Bonus, and even then, if you're good enough, you can just forgo that entirely. Let that sink in, the main reason why Physical Ranged is brought into the party is because it needs to exist in a party , not because of its tools, not because of its ability to kite. No. It's because of the 1% Party Bonus that they have no control over.

--

As for job design and identity as a whole. It genuinely feels like the game used to have all these different shaped holes on the box, and all the jobs are the different shapes that you push through the holes.You like the star shape? Aight, push it to the star shaped hole. That's fun! There genuinely was gameplay variety just because every shape didn't just fit in one hole. Different jobs did different things, not just different roles, different jobs.

Come Shadowbringers, Square decided that maintaining all those different holes in the box was too hard for them, and too hard for new players because for some reason, they thought that gameplay variety was a barrier to entry . So they decided to block up all the other holes and then just leave the Circle hole open. So the devs tried to push the different shapes to this circle and they found out that they don't fit. So devs, under the guise of "listening to players", started to cut and trim the different shapes to be circles.

The star got their angles (Tank Stance/ DPS Stance toolkits, Agro management, Enmity combos) cut out and the star turned into a circle. They still call that a star, even though functionally it's a circle. Square did the same to the Triangle, they cut out all the angles (Selene, Fairy having a separate GCD queue as Scholar, Bane, DoTs, Shadow Flare the back and forth between ED and no ED) and turned it into a circle. Same thing with the square (Foe's Requiem, Hypercharge, Palisade, Refresh, Old Wanderer's Minuet, Gauss Barrel, old Heat Gauge and Reload/Quick Reload), same thing with the rectangle (Old Astro cards, Royal Road) same thing with the Octagon (Dark Arts, Darkside MP management, Old Delirium), you get the idea.

So now what we have is a game that has one Circle hole, a Circle, and all the other shapes that were trimmed into being a circle. But oh don't worry! The trimmed circles weren't trimmed all that perfectly, so technically the shapes are different from each other, but only pretty minute differences, and this iteration of the game was the one that blew up, so now a lot of new players that didn't experience the game when it had a lot of different shaped holes and shapes have their experiences anchored in this One hole, One Shape game, and they think it's the best game evar!

That's how I feel about the game from being a Stormblood Andy anyway. Some of the MSQ and Raid stories are fun and all but I really do miss my different shapes. I really do.

[Kosachi]

Come Shadowbringers, Square decided that maintaining all those different holes in the box was too hard for them, and too hard for new players because for some reason, they thought that gameplay variety was a barrier to entry . So they decided to block up all the other holes and then just leave the Circle hole open. So the devs tried to push the different shapes to this circle and they found out that they don't fit. So devs, under the guise of "listening to players", started to cut and trim the different shapes to be circles.

The star got their angles (Tank Stance/ DPS Stance toolkits, Agro management, Enmity combos) cut out and the star turned into a circle. They still call that a star, even though functionally it's a circle. Square did the same to the Triangle, they cut out all the angles (Selene, Fairy having a separate GCD queue as Scholar, Bane, DoTs, Shadow Flare the back and forth between ED and no ED) and turned it into a circle. Same thing with the square (Foe's Requiem, Hypercharge, Palisade, Refresh, Old Wanderer's Minuet, Gauss Barrel, old Heat Gauge and Reload/Quick Reload), same thing with the rectangle (Old Astro cards, Royal Road) same thing with the Octagon (Dark Arts, Darkside MP management, Old Delirium), you get the idea.

So now what we have is a game that has one Circle hole, a Circle, and all the other shapes that were trimmed into being a circle. But oh don't worry! The trimmed circles weren't trimmed all that perfectly, so technically the shapes are different from each other, but only pretty minute differences, and this iteration of the game was the one that blew up, so now a lot of new players that didn't experience the game when it had a lot of different shaped holes and shapes have their experiences anchored in this One hole, One Shape game, and they think it's the best game evar!

If I could like your post 1'000 more times, I would. Echoes my sentiments perfectly

[grinkdaboy]

melee dps have it the best. 5 jobs and all of them feel very unique from eachother. the only thing they might have in common is ninja, monk, and samurai having a built-in haste buff or having odd minute and even minute burst.

tanks are whatever, lobotomized quasi melee dps with none of the rotational complexity

caster seems ok, but rdm has been given the shitstick with how they've been designing fights since abyssos (no longer can you save a run by mass rezzing people because now encounters are rife with body checks which lowers their value to a group considerably). black mage always has it good because it's yoship's main job and summoner was gutted (rightfully so i might add) into something more resembling a classic ff summoner instead of a bootleg affliction warlock.

i almost forgot about phys ranged! phys ranged has been okay. it brings helpful utility and is also the role to play if you want to dps but also faceroll. all phys ranged can attack while moving and while away from the boss so i feel like they get a pretty sweet deal with all things considered yet they still whine and cry.

healers i feel made their own bed by crying and whining about having to dps. most of their dps abilities were stripped away. they continued crying and whining about vuln stacks making it too hard to heal in savage prog/reclears. so they removed vuln stacks and now you just get damage downs from taking avoidable damage. it remains to be seen where healers crying and sobbing will take us next but i suspect it will be not a good place

[Renathras]

...and you had to resort to DPS spells for movement in your argument, proving my point that GCD heals cannot work in the current environment that would be necessary...

Cure 1 has a 1.5 sec cast time.
Cure 2 has a 2 sec cast time.
Medica 1 has a 2 sec cast time. (An overlooked benefit that Medica 2 does not share)
Regen is instant cast.

Both Cures and Medica 1 allow slidecasting, Regen allows leisurely walking. Note that BLM spells take up (or exceed) the 2.5 sec standard GCD, so it CANNOT slidecast and MUST use other tools or instants to allow for movement. Fortunately, it does have a lot of these.

Also, Dia was nerfed in EW so that it requires, at minimum, 15s to have passed before refreshing it so that it's not a DPS loss to do so.

If your choices is cast literally nothing or Dia, Dia is a DPS gain. Lilies are preferred since they add up to a Misery, which is DPS neutral vs Glare or a DPS gain if used in buff windows. Regen CAN be a DPS gain instead if it saves you some resource so you can use it for future movement or healing to save you a GCD on that end, but that's a lot harder to math out/execute.

The 120 upfront potency of ShB was much more substantial to facilitate it as a movement tool back then,

Do agree with this, though.

And as for the other Jobs, I was comparing WHM to BLM as they do have some similarities in how they do things (SOME, not a lot, but they are foils to each other in a number of respects) and since it can show how it can work in the modern system.

Personally, I'd prefer older style fights with less movement, but the point is that it's entirely possible to do it now. Make Lilies work like RDM's Acceleration where instead of having different abilities, they can be used to make the next hardcast heal instant cast. Some Sharpcast-like ability to make Regen deal all of its healing at once would make for an emergency bomb cure. Make the oGCDs into GCDs like Benison, Tetra, and Asylum (still instant cast - Regen is - but GCDs). It's not hard to make a GCD healer that works in the modern game. SE's Devs not doing so is more an indictment on them than on the concept.

Mhach and Ivalice existed at time periods when Healers had more DPS options and they worked just fine. Your own argument is working against you.

They also existed when people didn't use a lot of those more DPS options on average, and where Healers were nearly completely at the mercy of hardcast heals if they weren't named SCH.

You think a lot more highly of this playerbase than I do if you’re sincerely comparing the world first racers to the average player.

Lol, fair enough, though I have noticed that's a theme between our twoo perspectives..

RDM is still the second most played Caster in general content. It's only "collapsed" in high end stuff because it does LESS (not the same) damage as SMN in both Savages and Ultimates. I do agree people will leave Jobs that do LESS damage than other Jobs. That's entirely my point in saying they need to be balanced for doing the same damage!

On SMN, we will just disagree:

1) SMN has never been "DoTs". DoTs have never been on the tin of "summons powerful entities to unleash attacks on enemies". Current SMN does this, old SMN never did outside of Bahamut and Phoneix.
2) No, there's optimization. "In other words" it's not convoluted and so arcane that it's impossible for an individual person using only in-game resources to discover how to play it optimally.
3) Yup. It doesn't matter how much the system is derided if it IS the system. Old SMN also fit the 2 min meta, btw, but was much more convoluted to play.
4) No, you can't. Most DPS Jobs require you to have to look at hotbars to know if things procced or what. Some have Job Gauges that present this well, many do not. DoTs have you needing to watch the boss' hotbar or use a timer macro or add-on. SMN requires none of that to play. You can never once look at your hotbar or the boss's debuffs or your own self-buffs and still play it optimally.
5) It's plenty of flexibility, it's just not flexibility you personally enjoy. Imagine if BLM could shift around its casts so it could choose when Fire IVs don't have cast times? Oh right, it CAN! And that's considered flexiblity!

Again, we're probably going to just disagree on these things, and that's fine.

The important thing is to understand neither of our positions are FACTS, they're opinion/subjective, and important for you to understand that your position isn't universal, just as I already understand this of mine. Indeed, it's WHY I think they should have added GRM at the same time, since I do know some people enjoyed that playstyle and I feel it should still be around so those people could be content with it.

As for the 24 mans - nah, the average player competence was higher in SB to begin with. It's because they hit really hard and not all the mechanics were apparent to players when hit by them. The mechanics were too unforgiving and closer to an Extreme level of difficulty, just if the Enrage were removed (or...extremely more lenient). I think Susano Ex was easier than TG Cid at launch was; and I say this as someone that farmed Susano (and Lackshmi, but she'd never drop her mount!) for their mounts at the time.

lol why r u guys even talking to him seriously.

Back to your old stupidity, I see? And here I thought you had turned over a new trollish leaf, lol

As we have discussed before, I've cleared more content than you have as a Healer, so you can hop over to your main or you can keep being regarded as a troll. Granted, you ARE a troll, so even on your main that might stick, but at least you'd be backing up your big talk.

Besides which, saying Orbonne at launch was beastly is hardly a hot take. It's something the entire community has held as a fact from that time to now. Contesting it just proves you literally don't know how to play the game, nor anything about it.

More people are playing Summoner now than they were when it was a job without an identity and didn't function like the Summoner fantasy. Which is summoning. Which is does currently, way better than before.

Pretty much this.

Not only is it meeting the class fantasy more, it's more played and seems to be more praised/enjoyed.

There are people that really liked old SMN (and some who just want there to be no easy Jobs in the game so only they can have exclusive access to difficult content and the like; even Extremes and 24 mans, to hear some of them talk), but that doesn't make new SMN bad itself. New SMN is a fine or even good Job. It's just not old SMN. One can be upset old SMN is gone and not lie about new SMN. It's possible and allowed - encouraged, even - to be rational about it instead of hyperbolic and salty.

Honestly, job balance is actually pretty good relative to how bad it's been in the past...

Agree with all of this.

Your last paragraph I have more debate with, and say it depends on (a) the Jobs in question and (b) what people individually want out of their class fantasy; but they all thematically match their class fantasy well, I think, and mechanically, most of them do at least a passable job of it.

Agree fully with the first three paragraphs, though.

Kinda hard to be taken seriously when you double down on saying that GW2 is f2p (which is clearly not),

GW2 doesn't have a sub fee, right? And the entire base game is free. Some might call that an "extended free trial", but before FFXIV did all the way through 3.5, "free trial" was usually "only for a few weeks" or, the more rare exceptions "only to a low-ish level and part of the base game".

GW2 mostly meets the definition of F2P in a general sense for the core game. The expansions are "buy to play", but don't require a sub fee once purchased, and aren't required for the base game.

.

Btw, you shouldn't be insulting people, whether or not you think they are "speaking out of your ass". If you need to insult people, it's because you don't have the maturity to make your points without childish schadenfreude attempts.

Also, the person wasn't even talking to you with that statement.

Stormblood SMN had the SMN identity more than EWs SMN, the biggest issue was pet ai being a pain and that the current job direction was at breaking point by SHB.
People also take issue that's gone from one of the hardest jobs to play to a braindead job with very little optimization.

I'm kind of curious: How so?

It had only one true Summon and only got access to it once every 2 minutes after an arcane ritual more akin to a Warlock than a Summoner, complete with "Dread" in the name. The base pets were more akin to familiars than to Summons, and the main thrust of the gameplay was around DoTs and debuff interactions.

SB Summoner was more of a Warlock than a Summoner.

EW Summoner is more of a Summoner than SB Summoner.

.

You can hate new SMN for being simple (it's not "braindead", but whatever), but not because the prior iterations were "more Summoner identity", as EW SMN is the most Summoner class fantasy of any iteration of the Job in FFXIV's history. The prior versions were much more Warlock class fantasy. Which is fine for that to exist - again, Green Mage \o/ I'm all for it being added to the game - but Warlocks aren't Summoners in the normal sense, and FF Summoners are generally not at all like Warlocks.

They are playing it because the job is so simple that you can macro the entire rotation into 1 button.

You do realize some people play things because they enjoy them, not because they're lazy or stupid, right?

So...

Yup.

...you're again going to leave out Bane,

I believe I've mentioned Bane - and Fester - multiple times. Like when talking about BRD DoTs and how the SCH ones were comparatively boring and uninteresting.

The majority of actions MMO with both melee and ranged classes, for starters. Sword and magic right alongside TPS/FPS elements.

So which ones are those?

Which one has a class that is like playing Master Chief in Halo which exists along side one that is like playing Link from Smash Bros that is alongside one that is like playing BLM in ARR?

Oh, none of them?

Because if they are so prevalent, surely you could have mentioned one by name...

So the basis for your deduction that GW2 had no role specialization or 'Trinity' elements, however fluid... was that you rarely if ever party up, and didn't even make it to level 30, in a game that went to level 80 before its first expansion (though using alternate means of progression, a la Merit systems, thereafter)?

Well, to start with, it HAD no Trinity in the base game - we all know this.

Secondarily, in FFXIV, you gain role abilities by level 15 on most classes (not even Jobs, CLASSES), and usually start getting your distinct role abilities quite early. WHM has Cure 1 by level 2 and Raise at level 12. Tanks get Tank Mastery at level 1 and Tank Stance at level 10. Group content also starts at level 10 with guildheists or level 15 with dungeons. WoW is similar, with Spec choice now at level 10 (at least, when I last played in Legion) and even before then, hybrid classes have their first heal before then. The first dungeon is probably down in that range as well.

Trinity games you can tell by picking up the game and leveling for less than half an hour, and are often in a dungeon within 2 hours of picking up the game.

Because we do oh so much grouping up in XIV... and have such elaborate role interactions... pre-30?

First dungeon, part of MSQ, is level 15. All dungeons are group content and involve players grouping up and filling roles. And new players, a party of fresh first time FFXIV playing sprouts, are not doing things like not casting GCD heals.

And while I'm sure if I poked and prodded at GW2, it would have something enjoyable enough to play. The point is, it didn't for me from the jump. All games have to have a hook. You can't expect players to force themselves to like your game until they find something they like. If they don't like it, they move on.

Again, spicy/bland dishes or different types of music: You enjoy GW2, and that's great.

I did not enjoy GW2, largely because it was more an ARPG and didn't have a Trinity system in the base game (reflected in the first hours of gameplay on a new character) at all, and was, in fact, explicitly designed originally to PREVENT one.

It's great that you have that game to play that you like more than FFXIV.

And it's great that I have this game to play that I like more than GW2.

We don't need to make FFXIV into a GW2 clone to satisfy GW2 preferring players, as those players already have GW2 for that need and the people that like FFXIV don't have something else to go to instead.

You can love GW2. There's nothing wrong with that. As I've said many times, different people have different tastes, and it's great there's a game that matches yours for you to play.

As for job design and identity as a whole. It genuinely feels like the game used to have all these different shaped holes on the box, and all the jobs are the different shapes that you push through the holes.You like the star shape? Aight, push it to the star shaped hole. That's fun! There genuinely was gameplay variety just because every shape didn't just fit in one hole. Different jobs did different things, not just different roles, different jobs.

Not to make light of your post, because I agree with several parts of it, but this did make me think of that "That's right! It goes in the square hole!" video: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/7haqnQvrYfI

[tearagion]

Note that BLM spells take up (or exceed) the 2.5 sec standard GCD, so it CANNOT slidecast and MUST use other tools or instants to allow for movement.

you're joking, right? do you know what slidecasting is or how it works?

[Kosachi]

i almost forgot about phys ranged! phys ranged has been okay. it brings helpful utility and is also the role to play if you want to dps but also faceroll. all phys ranged can attack while moving and while away from the boss so i feel like they get a pretty sweet deal with all things considered yet they still whine and cry.

Because nobody asked for this? Phys Ranged used to have free movement but at the same time the most complex rotations/priority systems in the game. If I wanted to faceroll everything playing something that doesn't require more than a room temp IQ, I would go play another game.