Quote Originally Posted by Jeeqbit View Post
Do you truly remember Heavensward?
RNG mitigation (parry). Job mechanics built upon the concept of parrying when bosses weren't doing physical damage? Combos breaking due to lack of Accuracy? Janky and redundant abilities, such as attacks you can only use when the boss is at 20% HP, Fluid Aura, Featherfoot and Keen Flurry? No magic mitigation or AoE on PLD? Materia for elemental stats? Bowmage? Vitality vs Strength fight with the devs on tanks?
I don't think that every aspect of heavensward was completely flawless. I do think it was preferable to the state of the game since then though. Of course some things you mention were positive changes like bowmage or no PLD aoe.

I agree that it was more fun to "do well" in dungeons then than it is now, because it shows more if there is a bigger gap between the skill floor and ceiling.
Understatement of the century. I would go so far as to say that the skill gap is nonexistent short of someone deliberately not playing correctly like completely ignoring aoe attacks or doing zero cooldowns as a tank. It is basically impossible to accidentally play "wrong" now and as long as you manage to avoid doing that then all players (in equal gear) are basically identical.

a big part of it was a knowledge gap - casual players not knowing the hundreds of different nuances and min-max stuff about this large game.
Filling that knowledge gap (for me and many other players) was the most fun part of the experience back then. Becoming aware of how little I knew and how much room for improvement there was was very motivating and ultimately very satisfying when I felt I had reached mastery of a given job. Also each job was so different that it was always exciting to pick up a new one and go on the same journey again.

Aggro management wasn't really a thing honestly. You turned on your tank stance, grabbed aggro, then after enough hits you didn't even need stance anymore so you could DPS. And if you stayed in your stance the entire time, you had aggro for sure. Is that description of it much different now?
This was almost true for standard raids/trails but aggro management was a big deal in dungeons or any content that needed AoE damage.

TP was pointless and redundant, mostly unnoticeable unless DPS was low.
Again, perhaps true for raids but in dungeons managing it was important.