Musings over raid buffs: MP, gauges, and roles

[kajv95]

Stopped playing Bard during Shadowbringers over being bored to death due to not having more to consider other than the DPS. When they took off all the weird parts that were sticking out of Bard that happened to be the raid buff things, I simply stopped enjoying it. It's not like I was dealing damage either. Apex Arrow was/is a clunky addition and they doubled down on it in EW it seems so I don't go back other than to flex jobs if needed on the odd occasion.

Red Mage is the job that gives me the feeling of still being more than a DPS, but that has the issue of casters being a bit weird in balance.
The main problem is that the battle system is incredibly simple - most of it is either "get more/less damage" or "deal more/less damage"

Even with the trimming of the battle system to its most barebones state, they *still* ended up making certain jobs better than others in certain situations. Like cutscenes that force enochian to fall off on BLM for example, because they last longer than 15 seconds. Sure, it's not much, but when some jobs simply don't have to worry about it (even having cutscene downtime be a borderline benefit through relativity) it really feels like even the simplest of battle systems isn't being properly designed for.

There's an odd fixation of having Machinist in the rphys job type being a selfish dps which blocks the entire role from being a support role instead, and so we get what we have today. Bards and Dancers that do about as much raid buffing as your friendly neighbourhood punchy monk.

[Valence]

There's an odd fixation of having Machinist in the rphys job type being a selfish dps which blocks the entire role from being a support role instead, and so we get what we have today. Bards and Dancers that do about as much raid buffing as your friendly neighbourhood punchy monk.

I totally agree that rphys as a role and identity would benefit immensely from being focused on raid buffing, and that's why DNC and BRD still somewhat work, in spite of being ranged taxed, because while in rDPS they'll show in the second rate dps group at the bottom with SMN/RDM, and perhaps a bit above MCH, they still enable a lot of selfish or melee jobs that play into their buffs which isn't represented in that metric. MCH on the other hand... Well it's not a melee, let's just say that.

But, let's not push it either, a good BRD or DNC will output thrice or four times more raid buff damage than a monk easy. This is already good mind you, but it tends to drown a little into the huge noise of other smaller buffs like said monk's brotherhood, and others.

Agreed with everything about Bard; it’s definitely one of the jobs to have suffered the most from the rigidity and passivity of ‘party support’. I will never not be salty that they think ‘Esuna’ aka Warden’s Paean needs a bloody 45 second cool-down instead of an MP cost and/or cast time. Imagine if healers had to deal with the same thing. ‘Sorry about the Doom but I used Esuna on the tank, bye dps!’. I mean, I’m sure 80% of Bards literally don’t know what the song actually is/does lol.

Uhm, Esuna is not an oGCD and has a small cast time as well. I do agree that Warden could probably benefit from adjustments or a rework, but I'm not gonna spit on their latest attempts to make it useful, notable this tier in P10S and especially P12S.