Dawntrail - What abilities do you think need to be trimmed from the game?

[TheMightyMollusk]

Healing abilities on tanks. We have healers to do that.

[Eraden]

Healing abilities on tanks. We have healers to do that.

Mao agrees with Tasty Bunny.

[Rithy255]

Healing abilities on tanks. We have healers to do that.

I disagree, Healing on tanks is perfectly fine, DPS also have healing abilities. I like that certain jobs that aren't healers can heal and have healer utility like rez, Such as Paladin, Gnb, Rdm, Smn, Dnc ect. Removing that to band aid fix healers wont do much, Healers will still be just as boring as they are without actual changes on healers.

I do think we can certainly reduce healing such as warrior's aoe sustain and shake ect. PLD's magic attack healing can also be removed, But in general I feel like removing healing from tanks just removes another thing from a role that already has had so much removed, Infact I want tanks to have a more importance in protecting the party, not less.

[Oizen]

Healing abilities on tanks. We have healers to do that.

Selfish tank healing is fine imo, the issue comes from abilities that allow tanks to heal other players. Especially with no conditions attached.
I think the problem abilities right now are Nascent,Shake,Intervention and Veil.

Clemency is probably fine.

[Rithy255]

Selfish tank healing is fine imo, the issue comes from abilities that allow tanks to heal other players. Especially with no conditions attached.
I think the problem abilities right now are Nascent,Shake,Intervention and Veil.

Clemency is probably fine.

I'd Argue Intervention is fine If Aurora and Hoc are fine, I don't see a issue in single target healing abilities here. I'd argue I much rather not want magic attack healing, it doesn't really feel like you can control it and it's not as fun as giving a regen/mit to a party member.

DV/Shake? Shake is certainly more of a Issue here, the fact it heals, regen and shields is really odd, I think honestly I like the AOE healing aspect of these abilities it's very limited and the barrier aspect is good, I'd certainly nerf Shake's healing, I'd even be fine with DV being nerfed somehow, but I like that PLD's can actually provide aoe support to allies, It fits the job. If we wanted to remove aoe healing then the arguement shouldn't just be about tanks as a lot of DPS also provide AOE healing.

I think tank healing isn't actually the issue, Sure warrior/pld can have some reductions in healing, but even if you have a DRK you're still barely required to even heal, The healing issue isn't just because some times have tanks provide limited group/target healing it's because healer design just doesn't outright work currently.

It feels like people are just pointing at Tanks being the issue on why healer is boring, I mean theirs a certain degree to it like Warriors BW/Flash being super boring in AOE, But I think the actual issue doesn't stem from tank problems it's actually just because healer design isn't really great.

[ForteNightshade]

Shake is certainly more of a Issue here, the fact it heals, regen and shields is really odd, I think honestly I like the AOE healing aspect of these abilities it's very limited and the barrier aspect is good, I'd certainly nerf Shake's healing, I'd even be fine with DV being nerfed somehow, but I like that PLD's can actually provide aoe support to allies, It fits the job. If we wanted to remove aoe healing then the arguement shouldn't just be about tanks as a lot of DPS also provide AOE healing.

The reason they added a heal/regen is purely for Savage and Ultimate. Much like Bloodwhetting, it's not nearly as powerful there as people think. For any multi hitting attack like Hallowing Hell, Styx or just close together raid wides, old Shake was simply worse than Dark Missionary and Heart of Light. Now they may have gotten a little too heavy-handed with how much it heals but I suspect that was due to them being terrified of buffing Warrior's damage despite it actually needing it throughout most of the expansion. I think a decent enough change would be removing the heal but leaving the regen.

Otherwise, I tend to agree with your overall sentiment. Tank sustain is a little too high but that's a combination of them having far too much mitigation and stuff barely tickling nowadays. Much like the healers having far too many oGCD that essentially trivialize any decision making.

Why?
Is it really that hard for DPS to press the faint/addle button to help the group? I don't know what's the Issue with DPS being able to contribute a small amount of mitigation (in a non DPS way) in a team based game.

Unfortunately, yes. As someone who has healed in PF, it's more than a little frustrating how infrequently Feint, Addle and even Samba/Tactician/Troub are pressed. Granted, I don't want them removed but it's still annoying. I've even be yelled at to "just shield!!!" because, of course, it's the healer's fault.

I don't know how positional are tedious to use, they're a way of optimising damage output, skill expression in fights that are varied, I think the issue is more that True North is so frequent and that hitboxes are pretty massive, I think having them behind large cooldowns kind of defeats the purpose of having them.

I think positional add a lot to the melee gameplay when done right, I don't think I'd enjoy melee without consistent positional, I'd prefer if they actually became more meaningful if anything.

My issue with positionals is bosses lately turn far too irregularly, and I'm at the mercy of tanks positioning properly. Add to the fact we've been getting fights like P11S where it's downright impossible to get all your positionals even with True North stacks unless you do a strat specifically tailored to them, which PF does, and it just becomes more of a chore than anything engaging.

[Limecat]

My issue with positionals is bosses lately turn far too irregularly, and I'm at the mercy of tanks positioning properly. Add to the fact we've been getting fights like P11S where it's downright impossible to get all your positionals even with True North stacks unless you do a strat specifically tailored to them, which PF does, and it just becomes more of a chore than anything engaging.

I think the biggest problem with positionals is that they aren't a reward. You hit them to do the expected, homogenized par damage. Change them to something like double the potency of the normal hit, true extra damage beyond what's intended for the fight, and you'll quickly find people everywhere magically learning how to be combat ballerinas within the hour.

[Absurdity]

My issue with positionals is bosses lately turn far too irregularly, and I'm at the mercy of tanks positioning properly. Add to the fact we've been getting fights like P11S where it's downright impossible to get all your positionals even with True North stacks unless you do a strat specifically tailored to them, which PF does, and it just becomes more of a chore than anything engaging.

Which is really just down to the dev's design decisions again. Since 90% of the difficulty comes from boss mechanics nowadays every harder fight has turned into a spam fest that constantly forces you across the map, the movement is down to all newer bosses auto positioning after everything they do (often in nonsensical ways as well, why does Nald'thal turn south with every mechanic when the general consensus is to tank the boss facing north and has been for years? Who on the dev team looked at that and thought "Looks good, ship it!"?).

Would the removal of those put even more emphasis on tank positioning? Yeah, and it's honestly how it should be. It might be occasionally really annoying when you get a tank that just spins the boss constantly, but it should also remove jerky boss movement when you actually have a good tank...and the beyblade tank will simply have to learn that their terrible movement makes it harder for everyone else.

[Rithy255]

Snip.

Thanks for the reply I can certainly see your perspective I agree with a lot on what you said, I'll just go in order from what you replied.

Tank sustain/Mitigations, I think tank mitigations being strong would at least be balanced If tanks weren't already outright super powerful defensively, I think tuning down on mitigation is fine in general, but I think the most important part about making tanks/healers more fun would be a general rework in both to feel more active then the current design imo, which leans into both tanks and healers just having way too much for the actual mitigation, healing ect. that goes onto the tank and party. If shake was changed to just regen/barrier instead I'd also like that regen aspect for Paladin, if we removed the heal as in general the Regen I feel works better, I think tank sustain warrior wise that's kind of what makes warrior, well warrior I like the big self sustain I'm just not a fan of the team/group sustain on it design wise that being said stuff like shake healing and regen and the AOE sustain on BW (yeah i get this doesn't come up in raiding) can be a bit... too much?, while with PLD its biggest sustain is selfish through Magic attacks, and I'm not really a fan of burst sustain being tied to your DPS burst, as it feels like when you're not holding aggro it goes to waste a lot.

For faint, addle & ranged mitigation, I think they add a bit of depth to melee/magic, I realise some people really don't use it but its one small thing that can be seen as what makes a decent DPS to what makes a good Dps, Ranged in particular should keep mitigations, Job guide lists them as providing support and if they're always going to be the lowest damage dps group I think they should actually provide strong utility. (This sort of relates to why I like tanks having strong team mits/shields, It just adds more depth and ways to help healers which I find fun)

For positionals, I get that I see them more of a reward for hitting them, rather then if I don't always hit it I'm getting punished but I can get why that would be annoying if you had a tight DPS check, I think for certain fights they can just make positional not matter if it's really hard to design that particular fight around them, I know some fights would just be better made without them (I'm not a fan of massive hitboxes nor bosses auto moving), but I really enjoy how positional feel personally, I wouldn't want them just to "remove it" because that seems like how ff14 is balancing everything lately, remove it or make it not important, rather then looking at the key issues and trying to fix that.

[Jeeqbit]

the actual issue doesn't stem from tank problems it's actually just because healer design isn't really great.

To be fair, it always felt in Heavensward like you were relying on the healer, especially in extreme and higher content. If the healer wasn't good or they died, the tank wasn't going to live for long. Whereas now they can simply brute force their way through half of an extreme trial completely solo while the rest of the party watches to get an advanced preview of all the mechanics. Regardless of healer design at the time, at least they weren't completely unnecessary.

Peloton

It's useful between mob packs in dungeons. I often commend the DPS who use it when Sprint is on cooldown.

Leg Sweep

Some mob packs do aoe circles that can be stunned so the DPS don't have to retreat.

War mains want to do everything and be the best at everything. So now War is just a better Drk in every regard. It's what yall have asked for.

It's actually that WAR and DRK have an identity clash. WAR was always about absorbing damage from its attacks with abilities such as Storm's Path and Bloodbath. DRK from other games was also about taking health from others. This presented a clash but they went with it anyway, allowing you to spam Abyssal Drain and use the Souleater combo.

The MP cost of healing from Abyssal Drain was such that it wasn't meant to be spammed but if you were good at DRK you could keep the MP regenerating enough to spam it a lot. Then it got really spammed in Stormblood, so they nerfed that. They came up with a different way of doing it by absorbing the damage dealt into a shield, effectively achieving a similar result but making DRK a bit different.

It is difficult here because their identities clash quite a lot. But since they are now making jobs clones of eachother on a functional level, it's probably a waste bringing this point up anymore. Abyssal Drain will probably just increase in potency to be like Equilibrium eventually.

The issue isn't that WAR became a better DRK, it's that DRK became a worse DRK. The loss of stuff like Dark Arts, is one example of this.

Dark Arts was meme'd out of existence tbh. I think Edge/Flood of Shadow is a good replacement in terms of animation and how it feels to use, but there is a bit too little interaction between actions now. The concept of fully absorbing damage into TBN to get an Edge/Flood attack is about the only interaction remaining. I felt that DRK was much more sophisticated than it needed to be in Heavensward, but they went a little over the top in how simple it was made in Shadowbringers.

DRK has been leaning on its "Top DPS Tank" label as an identity for a while now.

I liked to say it was the "shield" tank but when they put a shield that is 50% as good on Bloodwhetting in addition to its crazy healing potency and increased the raw mitigation on it to 20%, it really took away from that. In Shadowbringers, it actually felt like TBN was the best thing on tanks but now all the others have kinda surpassed it.

-Combine Whispering Dawn/Angel's Whisper and Fey Blessing

I use those separately a lot. Especially useful if there are a lot of raid-wides.

-Honestly, I think they need to decide if they want SCH's main resource is either Aetherflow or the Faerie Gauge and remove the one they don't pick

Why? The Faerie Gauge is specifically for the regen while Aetherflow is for everything else. If everything else took from the regen meter, then the regen might end up not very effective when a lot of healing is required, such as during a big dungeon pull.