The problem with Tripling Down on Shadowbringers Job Design

[Valence]

Could you provide an example of how you would adapt a PvP kit for use in PvE?

For MCH for example, a lot of the crowd control can be adjusted into pve friendly debuffs that do similar but different things.

1) The multitool gets into a rotative cycle like in pvp, where you go through Drill > Bioblaster > Anchor > Chainsaw on a 60s cycle. You have 2 charges of it per minute for example.
Reassemble (2 charges) becomes used like Analysis in pvp and changes or adds additional effects to the tool it is used on. Maybe on a 40s recharge so you get 2 charges every 120s, and 1 additional charge for a smaller burst every odd minute.
- Basic Drill is just a big potency tool single hit like today. Rea Drill gets doubled potency or CDHit like today in pve (single target).
- Basic Bioblaster is the same AoE dot than today. Rea Bioblaster gets a slow debuff of 5% or 10% of 10-15s duration on every target hit (useful for AoE and dungeons)
- Basic Anchor is still a battery generator like today. Rea Anchor paints the target and triggers bishop's additional effects (raid buffs)
- Basic Chainsaw is a normal line AoE like today, doesnt generate battery. Rea Chainsaw gets an execute effect doubling its AoE potency, or just removing the AoE falloff on every target hit that is below 25 or 50% HP (whatever works best for balance/feeling), could also add a bleed effect (AoE).

2) The filler is split shot, slug shot, clean shot into the finisher (long cast time, slow walk) blast charge. Since here we have gauges, we can keep freedom into when we want to overheat with hypercharge unlike pvp where it instantly overheat at 5 blast charge stacks without input.
- No battery gains
- Heat gains to be adjusted depending on the amount of combos expected per minute.

3) The job keeps its pve gauges and still uses hypercharge as it can be used today, same for barrel stab. It gets the additional pvp effect of increased movement speed +25% during overheat (overheat being the additional buff). We can also imagine overheat bringing back the old 20% damage buff if we want to use other things than just heat blast inside.
- Optional but not related to pvp: turn ricochet into a proc of gauss round, else those two skills are completely redundant and uninteresting right now. Alternative: HB resets only gauss round, while Auto CB does on ricochet.
- Using Hypercharge dumps heat into battery generation

4) Battery can be spent on different automatons:
- 50 battery required for queen, it always consumes 50, potency stays fixed. 60s cooldown to prevent conflicting with bishop. Would be tempted to add more manual interactions with queen to make it less zzzz, but that's beyond the scope of this.
- 50 battery required for bishop autoturret, is AoE potency pulsing autos. Generates a shield that pulses and gives small barriers to the party during its (short) duration. Targets hit are afflicted by a vuln debuff. Bishop can be stacked with queen.

5) Additional weapons:
- Scattergun deals damage like in pvp, either a big double hit on single target, or a single hit on multiple targets and if multiple targets are hit, reduces the cooldown of the next Rea by 5-10s per target hit. It can count double into Wildfire as well if used at the end.
- Flamethrower is an AoE tool that deals more damage to slowed enemies (synergy with Rea Bio or just other sources of slow like arm's length). Also generates battery (1 battery per target hit per second for example, not worth it in single target).

6) WF stays like it is in pve/pvp, with the pvp twist that the last hit registered (in pvp it's 3, can be more here depending on what we want) immediately triggers detonation for better control.
- Idea of burst: Queen summon, Rea Drill, Turret summon and Rea Anchor for buffs, WF/hypercharge -> hypercharge ends -> scattergun to finish on WF last trigger. Opener would have no battery and I'm okay with this, but not opposed to barrel stab also giving battery, or maybe you actually just start with full battery gauge and zero heat.
- I hesitated to make WF fully like in pvp where it's a short cd similar to scattergun, and that you ideally combine with scatter but that sounds like too wild of a departure from pve and raid buffs/bursts.

7) 2500 MP used for second wind. You can use it as many times as you want until out of MP. Can be replicated for all jobs having second wind tbh, would make some use of MP back to the menu.

8) 120s cooldown sniper rifle, could be tied to heat, or something else? idk


Edit: I would see this bring a lot more choices to make centered around the multitool, unlike today where it's just fire and forget.

[Mikey_R]

For MCH for example, a lot of the crowd control can be adjusted into pve friendly debuffs that do similar but different things.

It's worth noting right off the bat there is a contradiction in your list. You initially stated that the tools would rotate like in PvP, so it starts Drill, on use it turns into Bio Blaster, which turns into Air Anchor then into Chainsaw before going back to drill, however, in point 6 where you give an 'ideal' burst, you start with Drill, oGCDs, then Air Anchor. By my reasoning, that cannot happen. Either that or there is something I am missing.

As to the thing as a whole, you have basically made PvE MCH with the following changes (for ST):
1. 4 step combo with no Battery Generation.
2. Hypercharge generates Battery, presumably to replace the Battery lost from the combo.
3. Rather than alternating Gauss Round and Ricochet, you mainly just use Gauss Round, though I assume Ricochet is still used, it just won't have its cooldown shortened by Heat Blast.
4. Scattergun is now a high potency attack with 50% damage fall off (and a ridiculously strong effect of reducing Reassembles cooldown per enemy hit). I will also assume it has a cooldown since we are basing this off of the PvP kit and you didn't mention otherwise.
5. 2 Turrets, one to debuff the enemy and one to do damage.

I will assume you flubbed the opener when referring to tools and so will assume they work like PvP, with a 15 second cooldown (as you said you can do 1 full rotation a minute) with 2 charges. With Air Anchor being as crucial to burst as it is, I don't see it lining up without having to hold charges and wasting the cooldown. As for the comment on choices to make with the tool. If it is like PvP, you have no choice, you rotate through them getting to the one that gives the most damage when you need it (reassembled Air Anchor in Burst). if they are separate, then you have 2 for AoE and 2 for ST, unless those AoE tools have potencies which allow them to be used in ST, in which case, I now have 4 tools fighting foe the same spot, Air Anchor is Burst starter, Assuming Drill is highest potency, what use do the other 2 have?

As for the Sniper Rifle, a 2 minute cooldown attack, thought people hated those? Even if you wanted to tie it to a resource, it is still a 2 minute cooldown.

Now, regardless of all that. This whole thing was started as an exercise to adapt the PvP kit into a PvE environment. So, what makes your kit more suited to that environment compared to the current PvE set? Why is yours better?

An RDM example (it's going to be wild):

You will be in Black Shift 99% of the time, unless you need movement, making the whole mechanic seem almost pointless. Remember, damage is the aim. In parties, you have healers do do the healing and mitigating (along with Tanks), so that extra 'utility' in White Shift is pointless. In solo play, it might be more interesting, having to balance out White and Black in order to properly keep yourself alive.