For those who main/semi-main a DPS (e.g. DNC, RDM) but like Healers...

[Renathras]

^in the current healer design the flexibility comes from the healing side

Yeah, but that's why I mention something like this for Dia, or Holy Might on PLD, or the Primals for SMN. They're all examples of rotations that allow the player to move pieces around in them to react or proactively deal with mechanics. I'd like more of those.

As to your point:

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I think the solution would be to try something different with each Healer. Give one a DoT that stacks, give another 2-3 DoTs, give another a DoT that procs things, and have a fourth one that just doesn't have a DoT (probably SGE, if they actually gave it a rotation like RDM or something...)

Personally, I'm just tired of all the Healers playing the same-ish. I'd like to see them all play at least somewhat differently. SGE pressing Eukrasia before it's Dia/Biolysis/Combust isn't really different enough to satisfy that desire.

[Shurrikhan]

I guess we just think of skill ceiling differently as well. For my part, I think there can be no skill without choice.

No one has disagreed with this, only with what creates "choice".

To a degree, said "choice" is always an illusion (and is generally more aptly described only as "optimization", especially from an amount of information that is significant but not wholly complete, as to allow for educated gambles), but that illusion goes a whole lot further if the best choice requires some degree of mathing out in the moment instead of following rote procedures (use action type A for situation A, with no contextual variation to how either the action nor situation are defined).

Which is why some have been reminding you that if you don't split each action into discrete uses and the likes of at-cost and no-cost "Use DoT only the moment it elapses" was never necessarily the best net value one could get from it, and therefore one of multiple considerations involved in optimization instead of being so dominant as to replace all else.

Make your DoT act like a loss-less multi-charge Ruin II CD and the most choice you have is in which GCDs to fill per minute with your charges... which was already a part of the earlier optimization problem anyways. You've simply reduced a meeting of multiple optimization problems to, instead, a single optimization problem that is much better summarized by a single rote procedure.

At which point, "use your mobile attack when you need mobility and don't need to heal" is already pretty well a non-decision, and by the time its charges would be insufficient enough to present any sort of choice, any non-embarrassing amount of healing requirements would also involve such things as instant-cast heals, because choices aren't made in isolation (unless you literally cut everything into distinct categories -- "only use for A; A will only use these" -- which, yes, would harm the sense of actual "choice" or decision-making).

"This isn't to say that mechanical perfection isn't hard, but it's a different kind of hard and one I don't find engaging."

Then your problem isn't one of "choice" or even a different way of defining it. It's that you want a challenge that you can more easily meet completely.

Which would be fine if not for two things:

1. that you then remove the option for a greater skill ceiling from whatever job you happen to like and insist satisfy your need to reach the skill ceiling with a more limited amount of cognitive load, and...
   
   
2. that you had elsewhere insisted on being given the same output as jobs that are far harder to optimize, meaning that you reduce all the jobs you're not personally interested into second-class citizens who simply pay more for, at best, the same reward or else, to keep them balanced, truncate what complexity is available to them.

I.e., the same exact two points over which you'd butted heads with others repeatedly over the year.

Admittedly, like counts of those rebutting your positions could be slightly inflated by those who find your personality intolerable, but even then, it seems likely that the larger portion of those who've been involved in those threads (insert "vocal minority" here, I suppose) prefer a sense of balance that accounts at least slightly for effort required to play the job well (i.e., even without Raise, EW SMN should not be doing EW BLM rDPS).

Personally, I'm just tired of all the Healers playing the same-ish. I'd like to see them all play at least somewhat differently. SGE pressing Eukrasia before it's Dia/Biolysis/Combust isn't really different enough to satisfy that desire.

Same.

[Renathras]

No one has disagreed with this, only with what creates "choice".

To a degree, said "choice" is always an illusion (and is generally more aptly described only as "optimization", especially from an amount of information that is significant but not wholly complete, as to allow for educated gambles), but that illusion goes a whole lot further if the best choice requires some degree of mathing out in the moment instead of following rote procedures (use action type A for situation A, with no contextual variation to how either the action nor situation are defined).

Glad we agree, then.

[B]Then your problem isn't one of "choice" or even a different way of defining it. It's that you want a challenge that you can more easily meet completely.

No, it has nothing to do with a thing being easy to do.

1) I don't mind minimal variations. For my part, I like doing things right because it's enjoyable to know that. The damage bonus isn't a reward to me, and I've been consistent on the point that I don't see "more damage" (or much anything to do with damage) to be rewarding.

2) No, I simply hold the position that people literally asking to be made to work harder shouldn't then demand they get more reward for working harder when the Devs' initial position was having them not work harder and they kept demanding to be forced to work harder. There's no second class citizen in it. To quote Chair "Tell them that their reward is getting to have FUN and not being bored out of their [redacted] minds! Shut up about a whole 2% damage variance."

In other words, more damage (or some significantly greater damage) isn't at all necessary. Though in this case, it isn't even that so much as it's more a survivability argument (mobility) anyway.

Same.

\o/
Agreed.

[Shurrikhan]

To quote Chair "Tell them that their reward is getting to have FUN and not being bored out of their [redacted] minds! Shut up about a whole 2% damage variance."

Idolize whomever you like, but I don't know why you're treating this as some appeal to any real authority, especially when "shut[ting] up about a whole 2% damage variance" would apply as much to anyone insisting that a far easier job should have the same damage as far harder job in the first place. Why, when one chooses the job that's easier on which to hit a job on which it's easier to reach output capable of clearing all content in the game, should they also expect to have the exact same maximum rDPS as a job that's harder to get even to that required output on?

If you wouldn't honestly expect players to, say, play kickdrum riffs and the harmonica whilst optimizing Summoner just to keep from getting bored, why would you expect them to play something harder for similarly added risk at zero reward? Players are free to juggle hamsters as they play Black Mage even now, yes, but that's not going to be a worthwhile alternative to it having more available to it than an Ice Mage's level of optimization.

Added risk for, at best, merely the same reward has never been a worthwhile strategy in any setting in which others depend on you.

The damage bonus isn't a reward to me, and I've been consistent on the point that I don't see "more damage" (or much anything to do with damage) to be rewarding.

I don't know why you're trying to make this out as some sort of narrow fixation. It's the literal only output of the mechanic we're discussing.

I don't mind minimal variations. For my part, I like doing things right because it's enjoyable to know that.

And here is the core of the issue, especially when you exempt any room for optimization that the player might not be aware of. Why limit the rewards of having optimized a situation to "minimal variations"? And why should any job necessarily be constrained to that small gap between skill floor and ceiling?

Though in this case, it isn't even that so much as it's more a survivability argument (mobility) anyway.

Mobility isn't a matter of survivability except insofar as you'd die if you didn't have sufficient yalms-movement-within-X-seconds or you'd call all access to healing a matter of "survivability" (making the term ambiguous to point of near uselessness).

No mechanic requires an external buff increasing their mobility for players to survive. There are no raid mitigation tools that require immobility; even PoA can be flashed and every other ground-effect mitigation has room to dodge around mechanics present at the time those effects would see use. Every personal defensive is mobile. That leaves only whether a healer can produce sufficient healing while moving.

Again, I don't know why you're trying to sectionalize this into 'damage' and 'other' as if you're somehow taking the longer view here. Hell, you have been the one most insistent on segregating a skill's net optimization in context from optimizing the skill itself (in DoT's case, by pruning the latter, thereby vastly simplifying the prior). Moreover, the distinction is moot; damage is the only uncapped resource this game offers, by the simple fact that it doesn't have a single fight with objectives other than "Reduce X's HP to 0", while all secondary outputs (those which do not directly contribute to the fight's objectives) ultimately amount to DPS dealt (through opportunities enabled/preserved).

[ForsakenRoe]

I don't mind minimal variations. For my part, I like doing things right because it's enjoyable to know that.

"One race had discarded all things that gave rise to sorrow, hoping to have only joy.
They found joy lost it's savor in the absence of sorrow, and lost their will to live."


The reason you enjoy 'doing it right', is because you are aware of the fact there is a way to 'do it wrong' but you did not. Removing ways to result in 'you did it wrong' removes the feeling of 'you did it right' piece by piece, until you reach a point where the rotation essentially plays itself, and it does not matter what you press, because you can no longer 'do it wrong'. Once upon a time you could screw up MP management on DRK and lose Darkside. Then that changed from 'MP drains during Darkside' to 'MP regen is paused during Darkside', so the punishment for mismanagement became 'you can't TBN at the right time I guess'. And now, MP management is 'pool it all for 2min window, spend if you're about to overcap', and Darkside is literally more effort to lose than to maintain (to lose it, you either have to purposely not refresh it, or you have to have like 3 consecutive TBNs fail to pop). And the result is, we have a job (DRK) who's aesthetic of being 'resource management focused', losing it's identity and becoming a very confused mishmash of ideas that has little to no cohesion in terms of design choices, because the devs wanted to reduce the 'punishment for failure' and took it way too far.


"Farther still existed a star without strife... where none remembered life's trials - or it's joys...
What it's people had gained from ease, they lost to apathy..."

[Connor]

Isn’t the whole ‘easy / hard’ job designs thing ultimately a little arbitrary? No matter how they design a job it’s going to come down to personal preferences in the end. I think the developers philosophy of designating jobs as ‘easy’ or ‘hard’ is doomed to fail as a result.


Surely it makes sense to just design the jobs to be fun, engaging and with distinct identities, then allow the community / players to make the decision of ‘hard or easy’ themselves?

Of course, something can be objectively too hard or too easy when there’s a major consensus lol but then it’s also adjustable through patches etc so it’s not like a class would end up game-breakingly difficult or exceptionally easy (look at the Summoner rework backlash lol)

[ForsakenRoe]

Surely it makes sense to just design the jobs to be fun, engaging and with distinct identities, then allow the community / players to make the decision of ‘hard or easy’ themselves?

This is what I'd aim for, balance the potencies of things in such a way that it's a gain to do the optimal rotation as you'd expect, but the 'punishment' for doing suboptimal rotation is less. For example, rather than having Biolysis at 70 per tick, it could be lowered to 35 per tick, and the missing damage allocated to a second and third DOT, so missing a tick from all three is roughly equal to what you'd lose now, but forgetting to refresh only one of the DOTs for one tick would be less punishing than current.

My WHM redesign loses 160p per minute if you completely ignore the new GCD skill and just carry on playing 'refresh Dia, spam Glare' style, that's about half a Glare per minute total. My AST card rework would lose 200p per minute if you don't use the new Minor Arcana cards whatsoever, 80% of a single Malefic. It's enough for optimizers to have a gain over non-optimizers, something to chase in logs (Energy Drain being 100p shows that even small potencies are enough to matter), but the difference is also small enough that the margin for error is lower, missing every Minor Arcana card across the entire fight is not going to cause you to hit enrage in Extreme trials, heck it might not even cause enrage in Savage week 1 thanks to crit variance

[Shurrikhan]

Isn’t the whole ‘easy / hard’ job designs thing ultimately a little arbitrary? No matter how they design a job it’s going to come down to personal preferences in the end. I think the developers philosophy of designating jobs as ‘easy’ or ‘hard’ is doomed to fail as a result.


Surely it makes sense to just design the jobs to be fun, engaging and with distinct identities, then allow the community / players to make the decision of ‘hard or easy’ themselves?

Of course, something can be objectively too hard or too easy when there’s a major consensus lol but then it’s also adjustable through patches etc so it’s not like a class would end up game-breakingly difficult or exceptionally easy (look at the Summoner rework backlash lol)

As long as the devs do ultimately consider added risk as being deserving of some (even if less than quite proportionate) added reward, I'll be happy. I'm just tired of people grandstanding (more frequent on EW release) on this sidea of "fairness" as equal rDPS+aDPS for all despite whatever ease (below average difficulty), reliability, and/or utility they bring to the table. If Job A can significantly more easily make the clear requirements than Job B, then Job B at least ought to have something on offer in turn beyond just "not getting bored".

I don't think any jobs should be designed specifically to be hard or easy. I think they should just take a kernel idea and extend it out as far and in as many ways as would seem to maximize enjoyment (with later additions doubling up on or complimenting what came before, as we'd expect that job's players to weigh higher those means of engagement). No more, no less. But if that organic development leads to a lower or higher skill ceiling, so be it; you'd just tune accordingly if it became a noticeable balance issue.

[Renathras]

Idolize

Why do you do this?

I'm quoting him because overall his point is more like your own, but I found his argument compelling. If I quote something from Socrates that I found compelling, would you accuse me of idolizing him?

Why limit the rewards of having optimized a situation to "minimal variations"? And why should any job necessarily be constrained to that small gap between skill floor and ceiling?

Because it's a videogame and that's what people find fun. No one finds being blacklisted fun, so that's a no-go and limits how much damage variation can exist. If the playerbase was still consistently taking people that did 30% less damage, sure, we could have massive variances. But the community doesn't, so it doesn't work.

As to why have some Jobs - not all, some - with a narrower gap between floor and ceiling: Because some players don't want a large gap between floor and ceiling.

Surely it makes sense to just design the jobs to be fun, engaging and with distinct identities, then allow the community / players to make the decision of ‘hard or easy’ themselves?

Agreed. The Jobs can fit their various class fantasies and have different playstyles, then players will gravitate to the ones they like best. If some like an "easy" or "hard" playstyle, they pick that one. If they like the mechanics of one or another, they pick that. Make things and let plaeyrs decide which they like best. This requires, though, that they're actually...different from one another and not various forms of copy. If one healer plays like WHM another like current RDM (but with heals) and another like current BLM (but also with heals), then that's not bad.

[Semirhage]

As to why have some Jobs - not all, some - with a narrower gap between floor and ceiling: Because some players don't want a large gap between floor and ceiling.

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