Yet another SMN thread: SMN is the only job that doesn't have a gauge/proc management

[Ivtrix]

This has always been strange. I don't understand why so many people hold BLM on a high pedestal when the standard rotation is so simple and easy to execute at a base level. Just rotate fire and ice, keep thunder up, don't overcap polyglot.

Idk, community perception, people see high end optimization where some crazy 500iq dude has BLM planned out every single gcd for a fight and they assume this is the expected standard. Then it’s just trickle down effect.

[OM3GA-Z3RO]

SMN has been dumbed down to such a degree that you can macro the entire SMN rotation into 1 button, that's how bad it is.

[Payotz]

This has always been strange. I don't understand why so many people hold BLM on a high pedestal when the standard rotation is so simple and easy to execute at a base level. Just rotate fire and ice, keep thunder up, don't overcap polyglot.

I agree honestly. BLM is the perfect example of "low skill floor and high skill ceiling". I just don't like using BLM as an example since the community perception of the job is that it's the "hardest job in the game". That perception is kinda in the same ballpark as LUL DRG from back when it would just instantly get one shot by a raid wide because of Blood for Blood.

[Raikai]

This has always been strange. I don't understand why so many people hold BLM on a high pedestal when the standard rotation is so simple and easy to execute at a base level. Just rotate fire and ice, keep thunder up, don't overcap polyglot.

It's because there's a slight misconception about why BLM is considered a hard job. Is not the rotation, which indeed is as simple as casting that static sequence, but the fact that fight knowledge serves as a secondary skill floor/ceiling for BLM makes it feel like I need to relearn the non-static parts of the BLM kit (that can be completely skipped if all you need to do is attack a dummy target) every time.

Is not like "I learned BLM now I can focus on mechs", but more like "I learned P9 BLM while learning the mechs / I learned P10 BLM while learning the mechs / etc".

[Eorzean_username]

The problem with this is the justification used by people to increase the skill expression always seems to end up "the players not playing to the optimal level should be doing much less damage".

The implication isn't "we want a Job that allows for skill expression" from that. The implication from that justification is "we want to be able to very clearly dominate/lord over people who don't play at our level".

At best, it's wanting to look better at the expense of other people looking worse (that is "best" since in that case, it's not an active desire people do worse, it's just a requirement for one to look better).

There's a lot to say about this, so I'll again "tag-and-bag" a lot of it for the sake of visual cleanliness and avoiding scroll-pollution.

As always when dealing with large populations, it's probably true that some examples of the type of player that you imagine in your quote almost certainly do exist.

However, I think that it's important to clarify — at least in my own, personal, anecdotal experiences — that the vast majority of "skill-focused" players really do not seem to have any motivation about imperiously looking down upon other players.

Even personally, I can say that, while I'm hardly anything close to a gold-parsing "elite"... as someone who finds current SMN underwhelming, my investment in seeing it become more interesting has absolutely nothing to do with wanting to feel "better" than anyone else — I'm just... really not having much fun with SMN's current state.

It's a personal and "self-contained" complaint — perhaps "selfish", in that sense, but not at all born out of a desire for self-aggrandizement and status-hoarding.

At least for me personally, I don't really care about "floors" and "ceilings" and other fancy terminology — I just want the rotation to feel more engaging and satisfying to me, because it currently doesn't.

Even if SMN became 20% more complex, but still did the same damage, I don't think I'd personally lose interest... rather, I'd probably gain motivation to keep playing it.

However, you are absolutely correct that most discussions about how to "improve" EW SMN inevitably end up turning into an elaborate plot to increase the damage disparity between the "low end" and "high end" of play.

But the reason for this, I think, is — in the vast majority of cases — not at all born from a desire to "feel superior" to other players, but rather that FFXIV's designers have stripped away basically any other way for people to differentiate between "playing correctly" and "playing incorrectly".

In other words: In modern FFXIV, what else can rotationally happen other than "lower damage" when a Job is performed non-optimally?

None of the following are "allowed" to matter by the FFXIV designers — either never properly-realized to begin with, or stripped-away over time:

• Time constraints
• Target priority
• Route navigation
• Boss positioning
• Boss facing
• Control tools like Sleep and Stuns
• Mechanical tools like Binds, Heavies, and Knockbacks
• Interrupting dangerous enemy actions
• Enmity management
• TP management
• MP management
• Party utility like MP and TP restoration, Enmity assistance, etc.
• Party enhancements and support (every form of "supporting your team" is either just "slap immediately at 2 minutes" now, or is essentially-mindless [Standard Step] )
• Managing when to use GCD heals
• (probably a lot of other things that I'm not thinking of off the top of my head)

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As a low-hanging contrast, if you look at World of Warcraft... there's an enormous number of reasons to bring a Class — and a player — to a party, for both Raiding and Mythic+ Dungeons.

Certainly, players want "acceptable" damage performance, but there are also so many other considerations — Battle Raise (only a limited number of classes can provide it), mitigations, off-healing, interrupts, control tools, kiting tools, aggro tools, speed tools, powerful enhancements (Bloodlust / Heroism / Augmentation Evoker buffs / etc)... the list goes on and on.

So, even if a WOW Class has "simple" gameplay, or does "mediocre" damage, there are still a lot of other ways for a player to "earn their place", "distinguish themself", "feel pride in playing well", and so on.

FFXIV has almost none of that remaining — so I think players have fled to their rotations as sort of the "last stand" in which they can still feel "rewarded" for studying the game, studying their Job, practicing / planning / playing well... etc.

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But the problem is, with no other forms of contribution remaining except damage output, the only way that two rotational executions can be differentiated is by measuring how much damage that they do.

If someone forgets to press a button like "Expiacion" or "Dream Within a Dream" or "Carve and Spit", what can the possible consequences actually be in FFXIV's system??

...Really, honestly, nothing... except either "not doing damage", or "deranging the rotation" (which itself really only has one possible consequence: "not doing damage").

You're not allowed to fall behind on Enmity.

You're not allowed to fall behind on party damage enhancements.

You're (basically) not allowed to fall behind on party HP / healing.

You're not allowed to to run out of TP.

You're (basically) not allowed to run out of MP.

You're not allowed to fall behind on helping party members regenerate TP or MP or manage Enmity.

You're not allowed to allow a dangerous cast to complete.

You're not allowed to let a dangerous enemy run rampant and uncontrolled.

You're not allowed to do anything except "do damage" or "not do damage".

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There's some minor exceptions remaining — like Feint / Addle / Tactician at the correct time, or mitigating potent Tankbusters adequately — but they're not really "rotationally meaty" (short of managing weave-windows during burst, I guess), nor really Job-specific... and they also feel more-or-less superficial / "tacked-on" in most applicable cases (and completely-irrelevant in most other content).

In other words, Feint — for example — is "Pass / Fail". You can't really "mismanage" it: you either press it at the correct time, or don't.

In no way do you ever "build up" to a successful Feint. In no way can you "fail" Feinting, as long as you press the button at the ordained moment. You cannot provide a "better" Feint by making skilled rotational choices or trade-offs.

That's the sort of thing that I mean when I call what "non-damaging contributions" remain "superficial, at best".

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...Thus, since "damage" is the only real potential "point-of-failure" remaining in FFXIV, players who are seeking to differentiate their performance — whether motivated as a socially-competitive action, or as a form of personal improvement and satisfaction — have absolutely nothing left to turn to except "doing better damage".

It is for this reason, I think, that "skill ceiling" becomes synonymous with "damage output differences" — because players who wish to be rewarded for study and improvement feel like they have nothing else left to turn to for validation.

...On the other side, however, you have players that want to participate with friends, or in the content that interests them, without feeling like they're "performing unacceptably" by not studying timelines, researching external sources, and practicing excessively.

And I think that it's too easy to divide players into simplistic groupings like "glamour casuals" and "elitist raiders", and that real people are far more varied in their feelings and motivations.

So for example, there are absolutely players that genuinely-enjoy the challenge, "thrill", or "puzzle" of difficult Extreme/Savage/Ultimate mechanics, but also genuinely don't really enjoy or take interest in moment-to-moment Job rotation optimization.

To those players, it's often said: "Well whatever — you'll just clear Week 5 instead of Week 1, after you and your teammates accumulate enough Tome pieces... so, get over it".

And that may be objectively-true, and appeal to a certain "school of hard knocks" or "meritocratic" mindset.

But... it doesn't mean that those players being told "just wait for Tomes to compensate your inability to do better" are actually "happy" with that.

This often gets mischaracterized as "wanting everything handed to them", "wanting to trivialize what Savage means", etc, etc — but I don't think it's usually so petty at all.

Instead, it's that they want to participate in the content, but they also don't want to feel like they're sandbagging their team for not plotting out every single GCD of Red Mage's rotation for 45 seconds straight.

They don't want to "parse green, but it's okay" — because the community, as a whole, likes to "speak out of two sides of the mouth": using low parses as a potent derogatory, while also constantly reassuring people "it doesn't matter, DPS checks are low enough that you'll clear anyway, don't stress about playing perfectly".

While it may be absolutely, objectively "rational" to consider the numbers that way, this is also a game, that people play for enjoyment and fantasy. They want to feel like they're doing well and contributing properly to their team, and consciously-knowing that they're constantly "underperforming" is extremely-discouraging, emotionally off-putting, and drives people away from Jobs that trigger that negative feedback too often.

...But then we circle back to the players who are being "emotionally harmed" (and that's not meant sarcastically — people are, hypothetically, all here to "have fun") by being forced to play through content with a rotation that's too simplistic and "not fun" for them.

These players exist too, and their feelings aren't irrelevant either.

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This is why I say it's a very sticky situation — it was a bit different in, say, the Heavensward era, when there was reasonable (debatable, but reasonable) "complexity parity" between Jobs... and so every Job would "fail equally", so to speak, and it was just accepted that "rotationally failing" was an inherent part of the FFXIV experience.

As FFXIV has increasingly pulled-back from that approach, however, the application of that shift in philosophy has been very "patchy" and "piece-meal".

This leads to the kind of roiling confusion that now exists amongst both "polarities" of the playerbase, because there's now "hot-spots" and "cold-spots" amongst the Job design... and different types of players find different "spots" to be the "objectionable" ones.

Therefore, basically everyone is getting upset when they try to eat this FFXIV-flavored Hot Pocket, because everyone keeps biting into mouthfuls that feel "wrong" and "unplesant" to them — either too hot, or too cold, and it's all over the place.

And that's where the backlash really starts, I think — because the entire "dining experience" is beginning to feel frustratingly "inconsistent" to both polarities of player.

Another huge issue is — as you and many others have correctly hit-upon — FFXIV refuses to allow "spec differentiation" inside Jobs.

Consider that, in most other ways, FFXIV allows "self-selection" into the content that a player is "comfortable" with, and can "complete" to their personal preference of success.

For example, there is no ambiguity about what one is getting into when pursuing Beast Tribe Quests, or Ishgardian Restoration, Island Sanctuary, etc — if it's too simplistic / unfun, it can simply be avoided.

Likewise, there is no ambiguity about what one is getting into when pursuing Extreme, Savage, Ultimate, Criterion, Deep Dungeon, etc — if it's too complex / difficult, it can simply be avoided.

To a large degree, Jobs do not allow this kind of "self-sorting".

The problem with Jobs is that:

• A Combat Job is mandatory and required to experience the vast majority of the content and Story in FFXIV.
• Each Job contains a distinct and unique aesthetic, story, lore, concept, weapon, fantasy, animations, graphics, gearsets, etc.
• Each Job has exactly one Action Set and one Rotation, and cannot be differentiated in any way beyond what it offers at baseline.

...therefore, it is really awkward, unintuitive, and uncomfortable for people to "self-select" into the correct Job difficulty — it's basically a trial-and-error process.

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Like usually, someone approaches a fantasy game like D&D or a single-player RPG and goes, "Ohhh, I like this, that looks cool, I want to be that!"

But in FFXIV, they swiftly end up discovering "that" is either "overwhelming and not fun" or "underwhelming and not fun" (depending on their personal perspective and preferences).

So rather than being able to "self-select" into the type of gameplay that they prefer within their chosen fantasy, they instead are forced to try to stumble around and artificially-select into the "best fit" that is, often times, a "kludgey" and "unsatisfying" compromise.

...Kind of like not finding what you really want on the menu at a restaurant, and just sighing and going, "Okay, I guess I'll have..."

...because you don't want to actually get up and leave the restaurant, because you're here to have dinner with friends and spend time with them. Or perhaps you're here alone, and the next eatery is way too far away, and you just don't want to starve. Or perhaps you simply prefer the decor and ambience here. Or... etc.

So you eat something "acceptable", but not because it's really what you wanted to order... it's just the best thing you can compromise on without leaving the establishment entirely.

I think it's the same thing for someone who really wants to be a Wizard, but realizes that they can only really handle Summoner in difficult content.

Or, conversely, someone who really wants to be a god-summoning shamanistic mage, but realizes that they can't derive any personal satisfaction from anything but the Wizard... even though they don't really care about Wizards.

And so on, throughout all the different "hot / cold" Job design space.

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This, in turn, means that FFXIV's Job Design is in a very awkward place overall.

...because everyone must play a Job, and everyone must use that Job's one single style and rotation.

So there is no way to allow everyone to satisfactorily "self-select" into their gameplay preference: any given Job is guaranteed to be either welcoming or off-putting to different segments of players.

So if you change a Job in one direction, it becomes appealing to X segment, and unpalatable to Y segment.

Change a Job in a different direction, and it becomes appealing to Y segment, and unpalatable to X segment.

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You can certainly say, "Well, but by having some difficult and some easy Jobs, then everyone can self-select into what makes them personally happy!".

And that may seem true "in a vacuum" — if we imagine a game where all Jobs are identical-appearing, faceless manikins... like 20 generic Amaurotine Shades.

But when you factor in that this is a fantasy game world, where people go to, at least to some degree, live out an imaginary experience that appeals to them...

...it's really not so satisfying to tell someone: "Sorry, I know you love the idea of shooting stars at people, but this is a Hard Job. You'll need to pick something else if you don't want to let your teammates down."

Nor, either, to tell someone: "Sorry, I know you love the idea of wielding the power of Light to heal allies and punish foes, but this is an Easy Job. You'll need to pick something else if you want a complex rotation that provides engagement-space for prolonged study and practice."

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For example, if FFXIV had even 2 specs per Job — "high damage, high difficulty, 'selfish' ", and "low damage, low difficulty, passively enhances everyone else" — and content was tuned so that neither one was "sandbagging" the party and risking Enrage timers, then there would probably be significantly less discord and dissonance about these topics.

I think a huge portion of the friction comes from the fact that people feel forced to choose between "what speaks to me personally (concept and fantasy)" and "what I actually feel comfortable or satisfied playing".

This issue is not unique to FFXIV, but I feel like it is severely-exacerbated in FFXIV.

For example, in WOW, if you want to be a bow-wielding, animal-befriending, wilderness-tracking Hunter fantasy-wise, but you also just want to chill, there's Beast Mastery spec.; however, if you want more complex and demanding gameplay, there's Marksmanship and Survival.

It's not perfect in WOW either, but I think that it works a lot better than the decisions that FFXIV forces people to make — and there seems to be a lot less tension in general between different "polarities" of players.

Then there's the fact that FFXIV's system just encourages people to be a lot "pickier", and keeps the design space a lot more "narrow".

Look at all of the factors that constrain what Jobs you want to bring to a party, and in turn, FFXIV's Job design-space:

• Potent stacking buffs (leading to terms like "cursed comp" to refer to bringing too many "selfish" Jobs at once)
• Ability to cram burst into the infamous "2m meta" (leading sustained Jobs like RDM and PLD to either fall behind, or just get smashed and reconstructed)
• Fixed comp slots ("Either bring 2 healers, or enjoy 'Mechanic Roulette' ", etc)
• Limit Breaks ("Bring at least 1 Melee, or throw away damage")
• Party Stat Bonuses ("Bring at least 1 Ranged Physical, because we bribed you to")

...Combine this with the fact that FFXIV constrains its difficult content to 4 or 8 players, and there's just not much breathing-room — not for Jobs to have "unique identities" or "unique roles", nor for players to feel like it's "okay" to "slack a little".

ie, People feel like they're under much more of a microscope (whether real or imagined) when they're 1 of 4 DPS, for example, than 1 of 10, or 12, or 14 DPS.

So there's an added sense of pressure that players want to "meet maximum output" — or, at least, "not fail dramatically" — when the party size is much more "intimate", and each player feels like a bigger and more obvious portion of the team.

That, in turn, leads to more panick / pressure / stress / hostility to Jobs having the possibility to "derail" in ways that are either disastrous, or outright-unrecoverable.

Then there's another factor — FFXIV has steadily-eroded the ability for non-Savage players to feel "challenged" or "accomplished" by completing "normal" content.

MSQ, Story Trials, Dungeons, Normal Raids, Alliance Raids... they've all been increasingly-"softened" in an attempt to...

...uh, honestly, I don't even know...

...and in turn, led more and more content to feel "disposable", "one-and-done", "uninteresting", etc — even to players that maybe aren't "top tier elite", but also do genuinely enjoy "trying", "failing sometimes", "being challenged", "triumphing / overcoming obstacles", etc.

When those players are displaced from "queueable" content, they end up spilling into previously "hardcore" content like Savage, out of a desperate attempt to retain their interest in the game.

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However, Savage+ is an environment where it's much harder to pay attention, execute mechanics, and perform a rotation well, all simultaneously.

So as more and more "in-between tier" skill/dedication players get "displaced" into Savage+, I think there's an increasing population that begins to find their Job's rotational demands no longer "fun" (as it might be in simpler content), but rather, "burdensome" and "distracting" — because now they're much more focused on the mechanics of the content itself, and trying not to burden their team by failing said mechanics.

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I think that this, as well, is another source of intense friction about Job design — between:

a) Players that want to focus on mechanics more than internal rotation (and may struggle to do both at once, leading to frustration and stress)

b) Other players that are capable of, and enjoy, doing both simultaneously (and thus find it disappointing and irritating to have one or the other factor simplified or scaled-back).

And again, this is something that would be much less of an issue if FFXIV both had more "space" (within a party composition), and more "options" (within Jobs), for players to self-select into a style that worked best for them, personally, to have fun in the game.

I'm probably still not touching on all of the factors that are "in play" here — but I really think that the issue is not-at-all as simple as it's often being made to seem in discussions throughout the FFXIV "community spheres".

The unhappiness on both polarities is very much real — but the reasons, and the solutions, are far more complex than the discussions (and/or personal attacks) properly-acknowledge.

[Eorzean_username]

If everyone in this game really wanted skill expression, we'd be drowning in BLMs. They'd be everywhere. All those BLM players would be frustrated that some of them have to play BRD [...] or MNK [...], because they really just want to play on the super hard BLM because they enjoy the gameplay and skill expression so much, that even if BLM was the lowest DPS Job, they'd all still be playing it. We'd be looking everywhere to see someone who has "Main Class:" as anything other than "Black Mage Lv 90". Yet not even the people pushing for SMN change are BLM mains.

...we don't see that in the playerbase as a whole, either. We see the exact opposite, with even very highly skilled players swapping to SMN in a heartbeat.

That doesn't seem to show a playerbase - even of the Ultimate raider type - that wants this mythical high skill expression Job.

As far as I can tell, this seems to be a pretty bluntly-true observation... albeit with a couple caveats that definitely need to be appended.

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First, you need to allow for the segment of the "skill-focused" playerbase that has any of the following issues:

• Cannot play a Caster due to team / static / comp needs
• Dislikes the DPS Role
• Dislikes Casting mechanics/playstyles in FFXIV (or games in general)
• Dislikes BLM or "wizard" or "magic" aesthetics
• Dislikes the BLM rotational style
• Dislikes the BLM story / fantasy
• etc...

...For "skill-focused" players meeting any such criteria, having "safe harbor" Jobs in other Role or playstyle categories is probably important, and something that they'll aggressively crusade for (and understandably-so).

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Second of all, there is "human nature" at play. I think sometimes, "skill-focused" players want SE's designers to "save them from themselves".

That is: by virtue of their more competitive and serious approach to the game, they ultimately do want to "win".

And by virtue of their respect for the game system, they also don't want to drag their team down during what is sometimes ridiculously-prolonged and tedious prog or reclear experiences.

Therefore, if a more efficient solution is made available, that has no real downsides, these players will feel pressured — either internally, externally, or both — to switch to that simpler and more efficient solution.

As a result, to some degree, the mere existence of SMN is a thorn in these players's side — something akin to, "Stop giving me this obviously-better option that I feel obligated to take in order to not grief my team / not make my life ridiculously-harder than necessary".

ie: I think some skill-focused players want EW SMN to "go away", because it's hard for them to say "No" to how tempting EW SMN is in high-pressure environments... even though they "want" to bring something that's more interesting to them.

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...But when you consider that, it's a bit interesting, in turn, to then ask if a lot of those players "truly" want "high skill expression" Jobs.

To be clear, I think that in some cases, the answer is definitely "Yes, I do — I play this game to be challenged".

And it's important to keep in mind that such players really do exist, and not to dismiss them — they're "high-functioning" within the context of FFXIV, and they feel like they're being "punished" just for being more skilled and capable, by having their fun toys (challenging and depthy Jobs, with a lot of space for both failure, and optimized success) constantly taken away from them in order to appease the broader majority.

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However, in other cases I honestly wonder if EW SMN might secretly be taking a lot of stress and pressure off of even many "dedicated" players... but it's just "taboo" for them to publicly-admit so in the sorts of "pride in the game" circles and communities that end up becoming their social networks.

In other words: perhaps a lot of more "upper-end" players feel obligated to vocally-dislike the EW SMN experience, and convince themselves that they hate it, because:

a) They've been conditioned to see overcoming FFXIV rotational challenges as a source of personal achievement and validation (which I think all human beings need, from some source, to not go crazy)

b) Their social environment is one in which they fear rejection or derision for showing open support for something perceived as being as "intellectually inferior" (or whatever) as EW SMN

...So any relaxation or joy that they might take from having a lower-pressure, less-distracting Job to use, instead turns into:

"Wow, I assure you, I really hate this... I'm only eating it because it's the most calorically-efficient choice... but again, I assure you, I hate the taste of this... nom nom nom... oh, this is so gross... nom nom nom... ugh, disgusting... nom nom nom...".

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...To be very clear: I'm not trying to suggest that current SMN isn't severely-lacking "meat on its bones" compared to most other Jobs, both current and historical.

Rather, I'm saying that SMN's radical simplicity may be allowing a lot of players to realize that they maaaaaaybe... honestly... don't reeeeeally mind having other priorities in life than "mastering" an FFXIV rotation...

...and that they actually kiiiiiiiinda appreciate being able to just take a Job into even complex content, and focus nearly-entirely on the content itself, rather than constantly-fighting the encounter timeline and mechanics just to try to desperately-resist having their overly-elaborate and excessively-delicate rotation grotesquely-deranged, or otherwise have their attention constantly pulled between rotational details and encounter details.

...But, because FFXIV has, for so long, included a huge portion of its "player validation" inside "rotational challenge and execution", it feels... [weird/bad/embarrassing/confusing/wrong/etc] to "allow yourself" to like a Job that has so relatively-little to worry about or be distracted by, and enables you to focus almost-entirely on the content itself.

...Like, yeah, SMN feels completely-empty (to me, anyway) when practiced on a Striking Dummy.

But maybe it's just heralding a new era of FFXIV design, where the "challenge" is focused nearly-entirely on specific encounter mechanics, and the design focus is pulled aggressively-away from internal Job mechanics, to the point where you're not expected to find much "meat" in a passive Striking Dummy rotation.

And maybe a lot of people are... actually finding themselves completely fine with that approach — as much as it may seem like absolute anathema to the standards set during Heavensward and Stormblood.

[Minarisweet]

It really feels like people just disagree with you automatically somtimes.

[Semirhage]

Perhaps the timer juggling sort of skill expression isn't that individual's cup of tea either?

But it's regardless fascinating to me that the people absolutely certain that skill expression is a Very Bad Thing are always, without fail, the people who never interact with it. The skill ceiling, the content that demands it, none of it. They just have Very Strong Opinions that YOU shouldn't be allowed to learn how to play a job with more skill than ten minutes on a training dummy will teach.

To which I continue to reply: nobody's forcing you to improve at this video game. But the demand that nobody be allowed to get better than you is very, very telling.

[Zebraoracle]

Perhaps the timer juggling sort of skill expression isn't that individual's cup of tea either?

But it's regardless fascinating to me that the people absolutely certain that skill expression is a Very Bad Thing are always, without fail, the people who never interact with it. The skill ceiling, the content that demands it, none of it. They just have Very Strong Opinions that YOU shouldn't be allowed to learn how to play a job with more skill than ten minutes on a training dummy will teach.

To which I continue to reply: nobody's forcing you to improve at this video game. But the demand that nobody be allowed to get better than you is very, very telling.

It's actually mindboggling. I don't understand how this even remotely hurts anyone, and besides, every other job is plenty populated by people who don't want to do high end content, you don't see them complaining about this.

[BaconBits]

It really feels like people just disagree with you automatically somtimes.

"Don't mess with FFXIV Fans, we don't know how to read."

Took me only a few seconds of reading to see OP didn't want buttons for the sake of buttons, just for Wacko to immediately chime in...that they don't want buttons for the sake of buttons.

Motherless behavior honestly.