Are MNK and VPR on autopilot? Is job design all about bursts?

[Valence]

Having leveled through VPR, I was a little confused that the whole combo is literally on autopilot, showing you the next move with a glowy button. Initially at release the only choice was on the first step of the combo to re(apply) the debuff or not. Now it's been changed and the combo is on full autopilot. As a casual MNK enjoyer, I was actually surprised/shocked to see that the basic combo filler is also on autopilot now as the game shows you which is the correct next skill to use depending if you have gauge stacks to spend on that form or not.

And it made me pause, because if we're designing all those nice and intricate moves for jobs, but the game just turns the button into the next one, or makes the correct ones glow, isn't this a little on autopilot somewhat? Or perhaps all of what matters now is the decisions the player makes in the burst every 60/120s? Filler between bursts has been consistently maimed over expansions in order to be an afterthought on most jobs?

And then it got me thinking, isn't it still better than a base, bland, boring 1-2-3 combo? Doesn't it introduce a different kind of patterns that make the base sequence a little more interesting? And yet, something feels... greatly unsatisfying to me with this. I feel that I have no agency whatsoever.

What do melee mains actually think about this?

[Lyth]

Tell me that you don't play melee without telling me that you don't play melee.

If you're at the level where you need someone else to tell you what your next GCD is (as opposed to knowing what your next 10 GCDs are and how the boss turns and reorientates in that timeframe), you're in for a bad time.

[AvoSturmfaust]

Let me tell you something, 90% of the people in final are even to dumb to press a glowy button, so i wouldnt even call it "autopilot"

and tbh its the same with every melee, samu press hakaze one of 3 buttons glows, reaper press slice the next button glows, ninja dragoon the same, so its all the same with all melees.

[Lyth]

As a MCH main, there is no way that OP is only just discovering dotted lines on combos for the first time. The job literally uses dotted lines to show you how to perform a single combo rotation.

[Ramiee]

This is pretty much every DPS in the game.
Everything is repetitive until you get to burst, because CBU3 decided every single job had to be a spender-burst job.

[Valence]

Tell me that you don't play melee without telling me that you don't play melee.

If you're at the level where you need someone else to tell you what your next GCD is (as opposed to knowing what your next 10 GCDs are and how the boss turns and reorientates in that timeframe), you're in for a bad time.

Why the snark?

I play melee casually. If anything this has made me consider that when compared to old MNK, which I played quite a bit (in casual content), I was left with no choice to make because the game made them for me. It also made me put myself into the shoes of less hardcore players for the simple reason that I don't play the role/job at a hardcore/raiding level, and further drove the point to me that yes, I couldn't wrap my brain around the 3 freeflowing forms of MNK (could only handle 2 at once, job mechanic just didn't click with me, but so it didn't either with a lot of people that found it way too hard to keep track of), which makes me understand why the devs would have done that on MNK's base combo, because ultimately they're designing for those players first and foremost.

But on the other hand, you have all those neat skills that are designed and added to both jobs, and... it doesn't matter, because you're just pressing the next one that glows up. So you can see how I'm conflicted about it? Does it make it clearer than the OP?

As a MCH main, there is no way that OP is only just discovering dotted lines on combos for the first time. The job literally uses dotted lines to show you how to perform a single combo rotation.

Kindly asking you to re-read the actual OP and search for the mention of basic 3 steps combos. The basic ones that don't branch, and only have a glowy button on autopilot, yes, even more boring, but usually they're not the sole mechanic of the job and there is other things to weave in. Unless your reply was just a gigantic troll of course, then good job, I fell for it.

Let me tell you something, 90% of the people in final are even to dumb to press a glowy button, so i wouldnt even call it "autopilot"

and tbh its the same with every melee, samu press hakaze one of 3 buttons glows, reaper press slice the next button glows, ninja dragoon the same, so its all the same with all melees.

SAM still has to rotate properly between 3 different branches of combos. I'm not saying this is hard or easy, I'm saying there is agency beyond "press the next glowy button".
RPR has agency whenever it wants to use soul slice between the filler combo. I'm not saying this is hard or easy, I'm saying there is agency beyond "press the next glowy button".
BRD or DNC have glowy procs to follow, but they're procs that can have agency whenever you want to spend them according to the job's mechanics or context. I'm not saying this is hard or easy, I'm saying there is agency beyond "press the next glowy button".
Even SMN has agency on which lego to use and when, and which of the 2 skills the lego unlocks to use first (for red and green), and it pains me to use it as an example.
And so on.

This is pretty much every DPS in the game.
Everything is repetitive until you get to burst, because CBU3 decided every single job had to be a spender-burst job.

Yes, I do feel like that SE has indeed chipped away at the filler phases of every job in order to only focus on the 2min bursts (and the mild 60s ones for some jobs).

[Myon88]

In my view, viper compensates by having more complex combo routing than other melee jobs, as well as more positionals. I have always been confused by people proclaiming it the easiest melee job. Consider reaper, which only has a single 123 combo sequence compared to viper's strict 111, 112, 221, 222. It doesn't even have any positionals on that base combo.

There's also another factor, the fact that there's so much more to being good at this game than simply doing your rotation correctly.

A lot of players fall under the impression that just because they're performing a rotation correctly, they're mastered a job for all intents and purposes. I suspect this is why so many viper players were upset at noxious gnash being removed. To them, the base rotation already had zero difficulty because 'the UI tells you what to do', so it's like the job went from 0 to -1 difficulty.

To me though, if you crutching on the UI just to perform your base rotation in the first place, you are failing at the game. If you were learning to swim, it would be equivalent to the point where you just learned how to tread water. That's not mastery, that's the bare minimum. I'm fine with the UI helping people reach that bare minimum.

If you're looking at your hotbar at all, that's mental energy spent not looking at mechanics, or your party.

What if you had to track the teacups in Strayborough while doing your rotation? (No surprise, many people can't). That boss is a great litmus test for whether you can actually play a job unaided. What if your party member did something unexpected? Would you notice and adjust in time? What if it was your responsibility to solve a mechanic and give callouts? Suddenly, being able to refer to your hotbar to plot your rotation doesn't mean shit, if it means you're compromising other things.

Which is to say, that's where some additional difficulty with viper comes from. You either tax your limited visual attention, or use workarounds like memory or referring to your buffs to find your place in the rotation. I encourage people to think more holistically about what it means to be skillful at the game, because it's so much more than what buttons you're pressing in a vacuum.

[ovIm]

> Is job design all about bursts?
yes.
this has held job design back for a while now.

[AnotherPerson]

What if you had to track the teacups in Strayborough while doing your rotation? (No surprise, many people can't). That boss is a great litmus test for whether you can actually play a job unaided. What if your party member did something unexpected? Would you notice and adjust in time? What if it was your responsibility to solve a mechanic and give callouts? Suddenly, being able to refer to your hotbar to plot your rotation doesn't mean shit, if it means you're compromising other things.

Which is to say, that's where some additional difficulty with viper comes from. You either tax your limited visual attention, or use workarounds like memory or referring to your buffs to find your place in the rotation. I encourage people to think more holistically about what it means to be skillful at the game, because it's so much more than what buttons you're pressing in a vacuum.

This might sound wild, but the boss moves in specific patterns. It's not truly random. Once you can memorize the pattern of the ghosts, you can preposition yourself to the safe spot as a tank and pull the boss with you. Or at the minimum, stay right in the edge of the general safe spot while dishing your damage out on that boss in the center before the tank moves to the safe spot.

[Myon88]

I have seen talk of those patterns circulating, and it's nice that that's an option for people. Personally, I'm happy just rawdogging the mechanic with my eyes because it's comfortably within my capabilities, and I also enjoy the mechanical challenge of doing so.

I just think it never hurts to aim higher on principle. Because one day you might end up fighting something without any convenient 'safespots' or useful tricks, and then you'll have nothing but your fundamentals to fall back on. Alarm pheromones 1 anyone? In fact, the boss right before that one in the same dungeon kind of exemplifies that too, and that's one reason why (contrary to the majority of people it seems) I find it incredibly fun.