/r/ffxivdiscussion: Would you be excited for a top-to-bottom rework of all jobs?

[Delis]

I would even be okay with no new jobs (I know it wont happen) so they could have more time to focus on rework of the current jobs.

[Rekh]

What we had before wasn't a problem outside savage/ultimates. It made content outside there funner.
Keep the hurrendous 2 minute meta in savage/ultimate and give us fun/varied jobs in regular pve.

[SigmarrIrenesch]

Huge reworks are always risky, like SMN showed us. I like it, but many don't. I would be more excited to see some changes reverted for many jobs, like bringing back removed skills/mechanics/interactions. Like for example, BRD's Sidewinder doing more damage if you manage your DoTs, WHM's Aero III, SMN's DoT's/Bane to spread them/Fester doing more damage if you have them applied and so on. That, or sprinkling similar actions fitting the current game throughout the leveling process so not everything is locked beyond lv90.

I started playing around the early patches of ShB so I don't have much experience on how the game used to be or why these changes were made (and why people hate DoTs and push for their deletion), but at least on paper many of those past things sound nice.

[Kes13a]

I would even be okay with no new jobs (I know it wont happen) so they could have more time to focus on rework of the current jobs.

I agree. more jobs into the same mush we have now accomplishes nothing except further dilution.New jobs are "easy" artificial content and the gloss quickly falls off once it is realized how empty they really are. they need to concentrate on fixing what they have now and better the uniqueness and stop watering everything down.

[TheDustyOne]

I would be excited for a complete rework of most or all jobs on the condition that either there's a new team to handle it (the PvP team at least knows how to make jobs unique), or the current team reassesses their design paradigm and realises the problems they've made over the years.

I would also give up new jobs to allow the devs time to think out how to make the 20+ jobs we've got unique and interesting rather than adding to the mush we currently have.

The other condition I would add is to still use the older designs as inspiration, especially for jobs that have been reworked. I still want Scholar to be a primarily DoT focused mage with a fairy companion, Summoner to be able to control their pets (even if they're adamant on not bringing back DoTs, at least let us send commands to the primals and carbuncle beyond just Radiant Aegis), etc.

[mallleable]

Honestly, they don't need to change much. The blueprints on how to rework/change/add to each job that will bring their heart to the foreground exists in their PVP versions. The Devs just need to be brave enough to take those risks.

[MisterNublet]

The reason for the 2-min meta is because when jobs had more varied timers, groups tended to prefer those whose timers all lined up for higher bursts. The problem is that damage is king. This is probably why we now have body checks over just enrage timers. That didn't change the problem though, as we still have said enrage timers. More damage can allow you to skip mechanics.

That is why group buffs need to be rare, limited in its use, and require a prerequisite, while making it difficult to align personal buffs with without losing out on dps. Scholars could require charging and the use of their faerie gauge, and Astro can lower the cooldown each time they play a card. DPS can charge their personal buff by having to hit positionals to unlock it, or similar to Astro, lower the cooldown of their personal buff by a percentage each time they successfully hit a positional. Those are just some ways to go about it.

Or just pull a WoW's Bloodlust. But that would be a lazy idea just as it was with designing every job with a 2 minute rotation in mind.

The whole design of encounters would have to change for them to remove the 2 min burst windows. Because changing how job buffs work before changing encounters would just lead to the problem we had before.

Changing the design of encounters would only be a good thing. The current design of having big mechanics every 2 minutes to try to interrupt players burst phase has become so predictable and boring, it has made this game extremely stale.

[sindriiisgaming]

i wish at this point i was.. but the dark reality is i simply wouldn't trust them to rework these jobs. they make so many promises and let me down every single time by being afraid to make massive changes that the players are begging for. if they dont fix it in 8. im gone for good... this company is hopeless

[Rithy255]

Considering how recent job changes miss the mark most of the time, No.
Unless they hire new/more Job design people, actually learn what people want for those jobs ect.

I mean I can "hope" 8.0 magically makes job design all better, but realistically I'm expecting another devolution and taking more away from jobs.

[Taranok]

I agree. more jobs into the same mush we have now accomplishes nothing except further dilution.New jobs are "easy" artificial content and the gloss quickly falls off once it is realized how empty they really are. they need to concentrate on fixing what they have now and better the uniqueness and stop watering everything down.

I'd go so far as to say every job should have an advanced job added. The advanced job doesn't change the rotation at all, but reskins it, possibly with new animations. An example could be a Black Mage, specializing in fire/thunder/ice, swapping to a Geomancer, specializing in Earth/Wind/Water.

You end up adding variety, can change animations, it literally doubles the animation work on classes, but doesn't require rotational changes so it's mostly about making sure the paired skills are otherwise identical (and I fully expect this to be more work than it seems like it should be.)

That said, the devs can definitely make it so each role can have 6 unique jobs. It would require a lot of work, but it is doable. Though the biggest problem is the devs need to change their encounter and class design philosophy away from busters and towards something like WoW's triage. Tanks and healers have been carbon copies of each other in practice since SB, and the biggest driver of this is the buster meta. Break that meta and suddenly things can slowly dehomogenize. That combined with killing the 2m meta and so forth would work wonders towards fixing the game.