Disappointed in Lv. 100 SGE

[Tunda]

I do wonder if they only have one intern working at the game design department at times (excluding pvp, got a full new mode with 19 full brand new job designs for a single patch last expansion somehow).
I don't know where the game designers are and what they're working on to be fair. Nothing has changed on encounter designs so far, it's the same bricks with just more difficulty in dungeons and a better quality in savage.

NFT project and FF16

[Carighan]

And they failed.. encounters are following the same structure with few different mechanics

That's just factually not true, mechanics are quite a lot more involved compared to previous tiers.

Source: Am pretty bad savage raider, and unlike previous tiers I'm sweating a ton in this one.

[Tunda]

That's just factually not true, mechanics are quite a lot more involved compared to previous tiers.

Source: Am pretty bad savage raider, and unlike previous tiers I'm sweating a ton in this one.

Adding a mechanic is way different than encounter design..

The most unique encounter I have played is Ifrit and Garuda in ShB which is not that far from others but it is a good jump compare to what we got now.

Encounter design in FFXIV is one dimensional and each expansion they try to add new mechanic to a design that 6 years old since ShB.

not even boss this tier blows me away like how Ifrit and Garuda in ShB..

[Supersnow845]

Adding a mechanic is way different than encounter design..

The most unique encounter I have played is Ifrit and Garuda in ShB which is not that far from others but it is a good jump compare to what we got now.

Encounter design in FFXIV is one dimensional and each expansion they try to add new mechanic to a design that 6 years old since ShB.

not even boss this tier blows me away like how Ifrit and Garuda in ShB..

Ifraruda is a bad example because while it’s a unique encounter by post ShB launch standards it’s uniqueness is just annoying and pointlessly boring

The biggest example of this conflag strike, conflag strike is arguably the single worst tank mechanic we have ever gotten (the only other competitor would be the the dragon swap in O10) and represents a wider problem with E6’s encounter design. E6 (and conflag strike especially) had periods of enforced downtime on particular roles when the boss was targetable and there was zero way you could strategise to earn more uptime

Let’s take a comparison, arguably edens best design mechanic in junction shiva. In junction shiva the “basic” stat is to have everyone simply run all the way to the edge of the platform at the opposite end of where their icicle is and pop arms length/surecast. This was “easy” but it enforces melee downtime and excessive running for casters. However if you were confident on your statics organisation and positioning you can actually do a star shaped rotation on the icicles so that the melee can take the edge of the boss’s hitbox opposite to their icicle and be safe as long as nobody is in their way

Going back to E6 this type of optimisation around conflag or even soccer strat is just impossible, there is no way to optimise more uptime out of conflag strike, you stand at the edge of the arena and you press shield lob and you be sad

Eden was very good about offering opened ended mechanics that could give you more uptime if you knew what you are doing but E6 was just so badly designed on this front

[Carighan]

Ifraruda is a bad example because while it’s a unique encounter by post ShB launch standards it’s uniqueness is just annoying and pointlessly boring

The biggest example of this conflag strike, conflag strike is arguably the single worst tank mechanic we have ever gotten (the only other competitor would be the the dragon swap in O11) and represents a wider problem with E6’s encounter design. E6 (and conflag strike especially) had periods of enforced downtime on particular roles when the boss was targetable and there was zero way you could strategise to earn more uptime

Although, I will say that if uptime can be retained, melee as a role loses its reason to exist (as a separate role).

That is, "melee" is only a thing because historically you took two steps back for two steps forward:

* You were in range of 360° cleaves and hence took a lot of damage compared to any other damage-centric job (note that back then, something like this had to visual to warn you, and no castbar, it was a random proc on a boss autoattack that all melees get hit by the AA not just the tank).
* You would lose 100% or near-100% if you had to leave melee range for whatever reason.
* In return, you did significantly higher damage than anybody else, except maybe in specific designs (see bolt casters in early DAoC due to its PvP focus). Often on the level of 50%-100% more damage, to account for the high loss of uptime for leaving melee or dying to cleaves.
* You also had higher defenses. This was more of a utility thing, as in raid content this was not enough to protect you (though non-melees could never survive cleaves, you could to a degree) but outside of raids you could tank quite a lot compared to other non-tanks.

In FFXIV, this is largely eroded. Importantly, many raid bosses nowadays are designed to account for melees always being able to attack every GCD, never missing one, and also to trivialize the effect of missing positionals so that it's not a determining factor in victory vs defeat, only in the degree of ease with which you kill a savage boss.

This is... annoying. It's like letting casters always cast without forcing them to move, or removing castbars from Summoner, or removing randomness from Dancer, or removing the need to be healed externally from tanks: It removes what makes the role, well, the role itself. If as a melee I don't trade significant danger and the necessity to intentionally drop to ~0 damage via leaving melee for significantly higher overall damage output and hence a penchant for greeding hits, I'm just not playing a melee DPS.

[Supersnow845]

Although, I will say that if uptime can be retained, melee as a role loses its reason to exist (as a separate role).

That is, "melee" is only a thing because historically you took two steps back for two steps forward:

* You were in range of 360° cleaves and hence took a lot of damage compared to any other damage-centric job (note that back then, something like this had to visual to warn you, and no castbar, it was a random proc on a boss autoattack that all melees get hit by the AA not just the tank).
* You would lose 100% or near-100% if you had to leave melee range for whatever reason.
* In return, you did significantly higher damage than anybody else, except maybe in specific designs (see bolt casters in early DAoC due to its PvP focus). Often on the level of 50%-100% more damage, to account for the high loss of uptime for leaving melee or dying to cleaves.
* You also had higher defenses. This was more of a utility thing, as in raid content this was not enough to protect you (though non-melees could never survive cleaves, you could to a degree) but outside of raids you could tank quite a lot compared to other non-tanks.

In FFXIV, this is largely eroded. Importantly, many raid bosses nowadays are designed to account for melees always being able to attack every GCD, never missing one, and also to trivialize the effect of missing positionals so that it's not a determining factor in victory vs defeat, only in the degree of ease with which you kill a savage boss.

This is... annoying. It's like letting casters always cast without forcing them to move, or removing castbars from Summoner, or removing randomness from Dancer, or removing the need to be healed externally from tanks: It removes what makes the role, well, the role itself. If as a melee I don't trade significant danger and the necessity to intentionally drop to ~0 damage via leaving melee for significantly higher overall damage output and hence a penchant for greeding hits, I'm just not playing a melee DPS.

Yes that’s specifically why I said you should be able to do strats to get more uptime hit it shouldn’t be built into the encounter and is why I mentioned junction shiva. You just could not remotely do full uptime junction shiva in anything besides a high performing static and it still had a high failure rate

I don’t really really have that much of a problem with 100% uptime but it has to be earned and it has to be hard to earn (again promise is a masterclass of a tier to represent this)

The problem comes with panda fights that basically worked off the assumption that 100% uptime is a given but didn’t nerf melee to compensate

[Sylvain]

The implication that expansions changes jobs is built on the idea the devs have literally any ideas what to do with the healers

None of the 4 healers have changed since the ShB overhaul except them continuing to attempt to redo AST’s card system every expansion

They have zero creative design decisions with the healers

I mean, Sage is litterally a half copy of SCH and AST on release was also a pseudo WHM (with cards).
Zero might be a bit harsh, I kind of like the lilly system. I feel like AST got some fun abilities such as horoscope, macrocosme and earthly star.

But yeah overall, they're not very inspired.

WHM got no lilly upgrade since its instauration in ShB
SCH fairy gauge has been useless since its instauration. I still don't know what it is here.

AST can't complain they're not trying to do something with the cards.
Sage well... I feel like Phylosophia fits neatly. it's not insanely original but it fits the job.

[Ramiee]

I remember going through Pandy raids as a Monk to help my FC train new raiders then Thordan unreal came out and I stayed on monk and then got hit with how small the hitbox on Thordan was and the other enemies in that encounter.
Honestly even though HW probably caused me so much pain in my teenage years especially with Alexander savage, I'm really starting to miss it compared to the current game.