Quote Originally Posted by Ggwppino View Post
Imposing a rhythm in itself requires that all classes are similar to each other in order to all be synergistically compatible.
This is exacerbated when out of 19 classes 10 "buff" (aka press the button every 120 seconds). among these 9 without buff of which 5 are all tanks.
Yes and no. It's required for balancing them across highly varied contexts, since you cannot have balance both across different jobs and different contexts if both significantly differ.
  • If only jobs' ability to exploit those buffs significantly differ, not the contexts, you can just increase the less synergetic job's outputs so their total contribution is still as competitive as that of anyone else.
  • If only contexts differ, then every job is equally helped or hurt in each context and thus job choice is not restricted.
  • If both differ, then some jobs become slightly preferred for certain contexts.
Though, that begs the question of whether that's even such a bad thing, especially when homogeneity would otherwise be a requirement and we are comparatively free to swap jobs around.

At present, our only differing serious context is a one-off content form (Savage Criterion dungeons), so we're far from being unable to simply compensate less bursty jobs for their being less bursty if we so wanted.

While I'd be happy to see future-proofing for more content forms in the future, for now it's more likely that jobs tend to be more bursty primarily because the devs see the average players as preferring to having that dynamism in their output over, well, not having it.


1) the 2 minute rhythm is limiting and forces all jobs to have synchronized burst phases, force all jobs to work with burst GCD with 1000+ potency. (Don't get me wrong, it forces the designer to force the job into a very routed rotation where everything has to coincide perfectly with the 2 minute cycles.)
It doesn't, though. The design goal remains the same as ever: jobs should be competitive. If they all needed to have the same raw damage, then those with the best exploitable damage density would produce the most output, but not even every jobs without raidbuffs needs to all have the same raw damage. There can be a range between higher exploitability/burst and higher overall raw damage.

Consistent targetable buffers like Dancer would optimally swap Closed Position between the two, while non-targetable consistent buffers would faintly prefer the latter group and low-uptime buffers would prefer the former group, but they'd still be held in decent parity with each other, just like buffers and non-buffers have tended to be when one looks at more than half the picture (e.g., more than just their rDPS metric, for which exploitation gets no credit).

(SAMs having equal rDPS to a DRG, for instance, would signal an inequality in in-practice output, given SAMs they also produce more rDPS for the buffers they exploit through more potency dealt under those buffs, thereby producing more party dps for the same amount of rDPS -- just in a way that's hidden from the jobs' individual single metric.)

2) the buff should be part of the fantasy of the job and that it heavily influences the gameplay and way of thinking. If I choose MNK it's certainly not because I intend to buff my party mates.
While I'm tempted to agree, since that sounds more fun than just %dmg buffs, I have to ask: in what way? Even a rough example would be appreciated.

3) Nowadays everyone does everything and there are no longer certain peculiarities that influence gameplay. Everyone mitigates, everyone buff. And they all (in general) do it at the push of a single button. (Because actually they are tools purely disconnected from the core or introduced rather forcibly)
I'd agree that is a problem, but because of that last part: Most of those additional tools do not come out of the prior kits interestingly, but are instead obviously just tacked on (isolated and un-interactive).

To me, it's not a problem that Monk has self-mitigation. It literally started the game with the only instant and complete threat generator, counter-attacks, and multiple mitigation effects allowing it to snap-tank (just long enough to take the edge off the 'real' tank) or even off-tank (usually after ramping up and just for large dodgeable attacks or against adds, but still). All that is fine. But that shouldn't be done in the same way on Monk as it is on NIN as it is on BLM as it is on RPR, etc.
While interactions that give a pretense of depth on paper can often actually reduce the nuance available to a given skill, and there's plenty that can go wrong... we haven't even seen any real attempt to integrate them thus far...

Instead, a capacity is added to one job and then the creativity-vacuum sucks that up to spit out, sometimes cleaner, sometimes more muddled, into each kit the first job's competed with. It's yet more templating, rather than an attempt at role identity.
4) There shouldnt be almost exclusively utilities that directly influence damage (inflicted -> buffs, received -> mitigations) but there should also be utilities that influence gameplay in some way.
Agreed. That's far harder to design for, but I feel it'd be worth the attempt.

If there's one thing XIV seems to have in excess, it's complacency.