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

[Oizen]

I'm a little confused by this...

Your first sentence amounts to "simplifications bad". (The comment on Monks is a bit nebulous, in that optimal EW Monk play isn't really any less complex once it's going than was optimal Monk play in Shadowbringers, and certainly has more going on than did late Shadowbringer's Monk.)

But then you end that with wanting to see the game simplified, rather than outlying utilities (Cover, Clemency) again being given any suitable context?

This sort of line of thinking is really standard in this community for some reason.

[Shurrikhan]

This sort of line of thinking is really standard in this community for some reason.

It reminds me of the old "Let's buff Piety, Tenacity, and Direct Hit so they're all real choices and each role would have its own best stat. But, let's also remove Skill/Spell Speed from the game, since it's just an annoyance," or "Consolidated combos would remove all the complexity of jobs, because you'd just hit the one button over and over!" all while shutting down any discussion of branching actual, real decisions (where what's optimal would rely on context and foresight) or combo actions being separately usable with actual synergies instead of just being finger-traps.

So many here seem to prefer a pretense of complexity over any actual depth in practice. Le sigh.

[Raikai]

It reminds me of the old "Let's buff Piety, Tenacity, and Direct Hit so they're all real choices and each role would have its own best stat. But, let's also remove Skill/Spell Speed from the game, since it's just an annoyance," or "Consolidated combos would remove all the complexity of jobs, because you'd just hit the one button over and over!" all while shutting down any discussion of branching actual, real decisions (where what's optimal would rely on context and foresight) or combo actions being separately usable with actual synergies instead of just being finger-traps.

So many here seem to prefer a pretense of complexity over any actual depth in practice. Le sigh.

I really wish they would just revamp those stats to make them something more interesting.

Sks and Sps have absolutely no business in being separate entities. And then there's the question (which I don't know the answer), but how to make speed attractive to more jobs, especially non casters?

Why direct hit even exists? It's just a different form of crit. If there's something to take note from WoW, is the mastery stat. Something that interacts directly with your job's kit, which could be potentially interesting.

It would be cool if we had one side of the armor kits dedicated to offensive materia, and the other side to defensive/utility materia - and that could open to stuff like movement speed, leech, damage reduction, etc.

[Eorzean_username]

Sks and Sps have absolutely no business in being separate entities. And then there's the question (which I don't know the answer), but how to make speed attractive to more jobs, especially non casters?

Well, as you probably know already, the answer in other games is for "Haste" to reduce all action cooldowns, instead of just GCDs.

So hypothetically, the temptation of gaining another usage of many different cooldowns would override concerns about not coordinating with party buff windows, as seen with styles like ShB Trance Rush Summoner.

You could also start tying a lot more systems to be affected by "speed" — such as autoattack-based procs, dot-tick-rate based procs (and allowing Haste to accelerate dot tick rates), etc.

...That said, trying to implement this in XIV is more-or-less a lost cause, especially without dismantling the extreme gains from piling everything into coordinated buff windows (which has, for example, helped to push SpS Summoner further and further into the margins each new gearing tier), and the game's opposite-direction design moves (with, eg, dots being wiped-out), and the game's priding itself on precise and exact encounter timelines, and... etc.

So, I guess the fundamental problem is really that "going faster" as a reward tends to fight XIV's entire design and structure, and become more of a wet-squib or even a punishment.

At this point, can that even be "fixed" ?

[Raikai]

Well, as you probably know already, the answer in other games is for "Haste" to reduce all action cooldowns, instead of just GCDs.

So hypothetically, the temptation of gaining another usage of many different cooldowns would override concerns about not coordinating with party buff windows, as seen with styles like ShB Trance Rush Summoner.

You could also start tying a lot more systems to be affected by "speed" — such as autoattack-based procs, dot-tick-rate based procs (and allowing Haste to accelerate dot tick rates), etc.

...That said, trying to implement this in XIV is more-or-less a lost cause, especially without dismantling the extreme gains from piling everything into coordinated buff windows (which has, for example, helped to push SpS Summoner further and further into the margins each new gearing tier), and the game's opposite-direction design moves (with, eg, dots being wiped-out), and the game's priding itself on precise and exact encounter timelines, and... etc.

So, I guess the fundamental problem is really that "going faster" as a reward tends to fight XIV's entire design and structure, and become more of a wet-squib or even a punishment.

At this point, can that even be "fixed" ?

Right, that's exactly why I can't think about how haste can work as the commonly known concept from other games. If the 2min meta remains, haste will never be a desirable thing, unless everyone coordinates under similar haste levels... which is quite unrealistic to think about.

[Shurrikhan]

I really wish they would just revamp those stats to make them something more interesting.

Sks and Sps have absolutely no business in being separate entities. And then there's the question (which I don't know the answer), but how to make speed attractive to more jobs, especially non casters?

Why direct hit even exists? It's just a different form of crit. If there's something to take note from WoW, is the mastery stat. Something that interacts directly with your job's kit, which could be potentially interesting.

It would be cool if we had one side of the armor kits dedicated to offensive materia, and the other side to defensive/utility materia - and that could open to stuff like movement speed, leech, damage reduction, etc.

Personally, pipedream though it be, I just want to see...

1. weapon types available to each job varied more significantly and functionally (tower shield vs. targe vs. buckler, buster sword vs. montante, greataxe vs. dual axes, longbows vs.shortbows, carbines vs. muskets, piercing vs. blunt vs. slicing fist weapons, light spears vs. heavy lances, grimoires vs. manuals vs. codexes, etc., each having different recast timers on certain/affected skills and particular advantages/disadvantages),
2. Armor Class divisions scrapped (no more Scouting only for NIN / NIN can only use scouting; no more Striking only for MNK & SAM, and MNK & SAM locked to Striking, etc.; anyone can technically pick from anything, though higher Armor Classes [say, "Plate"] would come with increasing penalties opposite their increased Defense, so they'd be a decently costly investment non-optimal for non-tanks), and
3. STR, DEX, MND, and INT actually each be different stats (instead of 4 different names for simply Power) and each primary made useful to every job, though to different soft caps and for different, sometimes niche, purposes.

I'd love to see a more melee-focused RDM be able to run, say, INT=DEX >> STR > MND, for a more Ninjutsu-nuke-based NIN run DEX > INT >> STR >> MND, or one focused more on Armor Crush (revamped so the skill name and animation make sense) be capable of taking fairly high STR, for a MND-high MNK to be capable of off-healing/support, for WAR to be given the occasional option of going low-STR to act as a frenzied, high-speed dps wielding dual axes and getting double Beast Gauge from either one's crits, etc., etc.

Would there still be optimal builds for each fight, just as there are optimal jobs? Of course. But, at least there'd be some damned customization beyond whether to play at the minimum GCD speed for the given job or to play faster as not to get bored but lose some throughput for doing so.