XIV EW Job-Gameplay is Terrible... Why?

[OdinelStarrei]

Not sure when the actual peak was, But what I can say for absolutely certain is that all the jobs I enjoyed during SB have been getting worse ever since ShB.

You know...I was thinking, come on, there's no way that's true. Surely at least ONE of the jobs I've had a sincere interest in and played since HW aren't worse off.

PLD: Rearranged to fit the 2 min. I feel nothing.
WAR: Removed crit bonus/most management from gauge, removed stance dancing, just unkillable with no effort in casual content. Fell Cleave is the epitome of too much of a good thing makes you sick.
DRK: Oh my god.
GNB: How does adding a single extra cartridge make a job this tangibly worse to play.
DRG: Outside of the complete cock ups with Mirage Dive/Jump, this job remains the least damaged, but some additions (second charge of Life Surge) feels unneeded. Original Geirsokgul is my preferred implementation of BotD. It won't matter anyway because it's getting gutted in a few months, so I can just assume I'm not going to have a good time.
SAM: Refuse to play SAM.
BRD: The Bloodletter change was enough. Removing interactivity within a kit is a pet peeve. Can't wait until DoTs are deleted entirely next patch, am i right guys.
SMN: why
SCH: Oh my god.

Reaper is new so I guess I'm not allowed to cite it...I guess MCH??? Was pretty ambivalent to the EW "changes", and the only reason I'm not more harsh on it now is because I still have a grudge over the Blood Weapon/Hypercharge stack mess. I know that someone out there is cursing me though for saying that. Old MCH with the procs, casts and ammo was actually really unique, I liked it and preferred it over heat, I just didn't know what I had until it was gone.

Eh...

[Sani2341]

WAR: Removed crit bonus/most management from gauge, removed stance dancing, just unkillable with no effort in casual content. Fell Cleave is the epitome of too much of a good thing makes you sick.

SCH: Oh my god.

Yeah. self healing on WAR was, imho, much more interesting when you had the choice between fellcleave or healing. having both makes both feel less impactfull.

And yeah, poor Selene. hopefully she's comofrting miasma and bio in the cut ability jail.

[Raikai]

I wish there was a place for more chaotic fights like King Mog Ex. It doesn’t have to be every extreme or savage or beyond, but if there was a good mix of more puzzle like fights and more chaotic ones, there’d at least be more options for players with different tastes.

No wonder why Barb EX is regarded as the best trial in EW.

[ty_taurus]

No wonder why Barb EX is regarded as the best trial in EW.

Barb might honestly be the best EW encounter. Not that everything else sucks, cause there are other good fights too, but Barb is on another level. Even still though, there’s something about the Mog fight that I really enjoyed.

The enrage is something your party had control over. Healing the fight is more dynamic because there are more sources of damage on not only the tanks but other players too, had Esuna mechanics, lots of dodgeable AOEs that you can afford to get hit by since it’s easy to lose track of them and this easy to get clipped by them, and it’s also not a fight where all 8 party members spend 95% of the fight inside the boss’ asshole.

As mild as the impact of everyone huddled in one spot inside the boss mechanically is (to which I mean, it’s not an inherently bad thing in terms of gameplay feel) it’s so bizarre to me how that looks. I like for players to have different places they want to be in, where ranged can actually be ranged while melee stay melee. Ramuh EX is another example. You want to stay spread out most of the fight, ranged wants to bait charm by staying far away, but also has to leave the water during thunder strikes. There’s orbs to collect, a tether to break by collecting orbs and a reason to clip players with your AOE to break charm. Why can’t more fights encourage movement? And not hyper strict movement, but flexible movement.

[Mithron]

hw was unfun with a exploratory zone that was dogshit, two raid tiers that nearly killed the raid scene, and the very nature that "meta comps" were made near neccesary due to said killer raid tiers
DRK was mandatory , DRG + bard was too good, and ninja was too good esp with how enmity worked
AKA Monks int down was worthless, had no pierce synergy, and ninja took other melee slot, FU mnk

I started right before 3.4 came out as a PLD main. A8s was my first savage. I got to experience day 1 Dun Scaith. I loved every single minute of all of it, even if PLD was "MNK tier." I felt like every job was the most fun to play and managing dots was enjoyable. I loved stance stancing, especially with healers. I loved NINs having what, 4 combos?

[Grizzlpaw]

Counterpoint SMN is hot garbage and should only be used as a template for “how not to do any class, even a healer”

I agree. I don't ask for SMN level difficulty because I enjoy current SMN. I ask because it's literally the bare minimum that SE could do. Even if you're the most turbo casual player on the planet who refuses to accept any amount of complexity on your healer because "Healer's job is to heal", A SMN level rotation is so brain-off that no one would have any grounds to complain.

As fair as compromises go, this is the least SE could do.

[Aravell]

Do people really think Job-Design peaked in EW or at this specific patch 6.57? Would like to hear Yes/No because... insert answer

No for me, every peak iteration I enjoyed of a job comes from an expansion prior, EW completely ruined every job for me.

The iterations I enjoyed the most are SB PLD, HW WAR, HW DRK, ShB GNB, SB WHM (lilies aside), HW SCH, SB AST, SB MNK, HW DRG, HW NIN, ShB SAM, HW BRD, HW MCH, ShB DNC, HW BLM, HW SMN, ShB RDM.

I think HW really was peak job design to me (except PLD, HW PLD was awful).

[Nizzi]

I agree. I don't ask for SMN level difficulty because I enjoy current SMN. I ask because it's literally the bare minimum that SE could do. Even if you're the most turbo casual player on the planet who refuses to accept any amount of complexity on your healer because "Healer's job is to heal", A SMN level rotation is so brain-off that no one would have any grounds to complain.

As fair as compromises go, this is the least SE could do.

I think I would legitimately argue that all four healers have more complex rotations than SMN does because inherently what makes a caster "complex" to me within XIV is how you optimize your movement and casting, and SMN only has that present within like 3 casts in its 60s loop.
I don't care to make the case for all of them because I think it's actually funny when you compare SMN to it's sibling SCH, and how SCH is literally just the old ARR Arcanist's DPS kit still (disregarding all of the removed parts like the Miasma line, Bane and Shadowflare.)

Optimally, SCH has 3 GCDs of non-cast free movement every 60s with 2 Bio refreshes and 1 Swiftcast Broil. Contrasting to SMN's 3 hardcasts per 60s (because you'll Swiftcast Slipstream, leaving you with 1 Ruin III and 2 Ruby Rites) that alone makes optimizing SCH much more complex, and doubly so when SCH's Aetherflow, which is another remaining part of the old Arcanist, is actual resource management with choice inherent in the kit, and SMN's is literally just "press button for damage :O" with zero resource management actually present anymore because of how you save Aetherflow for a minute so you have more to fit into the 2m burst. In ye olden days there was actually decision making in SMN's too because of the trade off between Energy Drain for MP (and 150 potency) versus Fester for flat damage that was double Energy Drain's; I bring that up because it's clearly an intended design of the original Aetherflow to have actual decision making versus what ACN/SMN have as Aetherflow now. Lastly, SCH wants to optimally hit its instant (Ruin II) as little as possible, and optimally SMN wants to cast as little as possible; of the two it is obviously much harder to fully optimize Ruin II out of SCH completely than it is to press Swiftcast and remove a hardcast from SMN's loop.

I wrote that not because I don't think you didn't know or understand that, I just can't believe the actual state of the current SMN lmao. And the fact that 5.0+ SCH is literally more complex than Endwalker SMN, and SCH has a 2 GCD DPS rotation it learns at level 2. The absolute state of this game rn lmfao

[Supersnow845]

Energy drain is ironically super well designed for how much of a mess modern SCH is otherwise

The ability is the perfect potency to seriously make you consider that you want to use it (unlike ShB where it was a 10 potency gain to weave it into ruin 2 and 5 potency gain to clip it, ironically ShB SCH didn’t have enough weave windows because you had to use healing resources to create free weave space, a problem clip mage didn’t suffer from because clip mage barely weaved anything) but it’s not strong enough that you feel punished if you can’t afford to use it

SCH also has the right amount of totally free healing (blessing, illumination, whispering dawn, seraph and critdom) that organising energy drains is fulfilling without being overbearing on the cohealer

SCH is boring AF on the damage front but it’s far and away the best designed on the healing front

[SargeTheSeagull]

Before this subject gets buried, I’ll throw my favorite job iterations in for the sake of discussion:

PLD: 6.0-6.2
WAR: SB
DRK: HW
DRG: ShB
SAM: 6.0 (removing kaiten actually ruined the job)
MNK: 5.0-5.3
NIN: ShB (didn’t really play it before ShB)
BRD: SB by FAR. Damn near flawless
MCH: I have no favorite iteration.
DNC: ShB. Burst was more interesting due to melee/AoE procs during burst
BLM: tie between ShB and SB
RDM: ShB
SMN: ShB
SCH: SB
WHM: SB (this is more commentary on how bad WHM has always been than how good it’s ShB iteration was)
AST: SB. I miss old cards and buff extensions.

14’s job design USED to be second to none. I remember back in SB I got a friend of mine into the game specifically by talking about how fun jobs were. That’s is not the case at ALL anymore. In fact, it’s so bad at this point that I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who wants anything other than a visual novel.

Though I enjoyed more ShB versions of many jobs, on a more macro level I preferred job design in Stormblood. .