Genuine Question about Job Homogeneity

[Jeeqbit]

Just because things are setup the same, doesn't mean they play the same

People's problem is probably that they play similar enough to the point they can be setup the same.

jobs do need certain tools in order to function. Tank defensives for example, Yes, they all have the same number, all with their own flavour (excluding Rampart)

Much of that flavor eroded. PLD's 30% mit used to be 40%. In DT, they gave each of the 30% mits a different effect (shields, healing, regen, etc). But rather than this making them unique, it has homogenized them more. You used to be able to say "DRK is the magic shield tank, PLD is the raw mit/block tank, WAR is the HP and self-heal tank, GNB is a jack of all trades" but now they are all a jack of all trades with a mixture of shields, regens, self-heals and raw mit.

PLD can Holy Sheltron themselves and Intervention someone else in quick succession, GNB and WAR cannot do that.

WAR's version also has an effect on themselves, whereas PLD's are separated (I honestly expected them to merge Intervention into Sheltron in the 6.3 revamp and was surprised it wasn't). While GNB's is not separated, it also has Aurora which they can choose to use on either themselves or the target, similar to how DRK has two utility abilities it can use on any target.

Even when tanks do get more unique things, it isn't liked.

I would say that the unique things are liked - for example a lot of people liked how DRK was in HW or SB. The problem is that unique things are liked too much - to the point people want their job to have that unique thing too. So after SE complies and gives the unique thing to all jobs, it ceases to be unique.

So the question is, why have you chosen to make criticisms at (what I consider) such a broad level.

It's less a criticism and more answering OP's question and explaining why other people feel this way. I don't personally care that much and think that SE has mostly just removed redundant abilities and listened to feedback.

However, in addition to those things, SE has simplified the rotations to make them hard to mess up. To a large degree, this has been good because it's removed annoying and redundant things, but they could be a little more interesting in some cases. Managing resources on DRK used to be genuinely challenging and get you thinking strategically, but it really isn't anymore for example; you just press all your abilities on cooldown and that's it.

But, I think the biggest thing is, how would you (or anyone else) change it? I often hear about how ARR/HW/SB done it better, but let's hear some examples.

If you played then, why do you need examples? It's tedious doing a millionth trip down memory lane trying to remember stuff from 10 years ago, especially if you can do it yourself. A lot of wikis have History tabs to see action history in the past, and old youtube videos exist to see them in action. Chances are, others write about "how jobs used to be" in the job/battle forums all the time.

how would you change Sacred Soil and Kerachole so that they are different enough for you?

I don't know about those abilities, but I can give a great example of a job that always felt different despite having all the standard healing actions: AST. The card game always set it apart, even despite all its iterations of it. The criticism of AST became that the cards were no longer unique, so SE made them unique again. But now the criticism is that the cards have no RNG and there is no Royal Road or Lord/Lady system to put bad RNG cards into, and the effects end up being the usual healing oGCDs most healers have for the most part.

The RNG and Royal Road or Lord/Lady system made it fun and dynamic, at least for me, because I had to constantly figure out what to do with the cards I was dealt. Now I know what cards I will be dealt, and I'll do virtually the same thing every time, which is dump them on the tank and dps cards on the DPS, in the same order every single time now.

[Mikey_R]

To preface, I know these aren't necessarily your points.

People's problem is probably that they play similar enough to the point they can be setup the same.

And why would some expect anything different? If we take a basic tank kit, 1 single target attack, 1 AoE, 1 ranged, 1 defensive and 1 provoke, you cannot tell me, if you had 2 tanks that had that basic kit, you wouldn't lay them out the same? How about if we add 2 more single target and 1 more AoE? You are going to put them in the same places across the jobs, doesn't matter if job 1 is a standard combo and job 2 is a 50% to proc the next one in the combo. Just to illustrate, if we assume 25 actions, just with the job basics, that is already 20% of your buttons that are going to be in the same place and that % only goes up as you add more. This is an issue of human nature, not the game systems.

Going onto defensives, did the extra 10% on sentinel actually matter? No, still used it the same as Vengeance and Shadow Wall. It even had a longer cooldown back in the day as well, did it matter? No. Nothing has changed there then.

Extra effects, Starting with the comment about DRK magic tank etc. That caused problems, we all know about HW so I won't go into it. Separating a tank into magic or physical is bad, to the point where every tank cooldown is at least partially effective against both types of damage, except Dark mind. Even Camouflage has a 10% base mitigation to go along with the purely physical mitigation from Parry. Noone is saying Dark Mind needs to be just as effective against Physical damage, it just needs to be not useless. Secondary effects on the 40% mitigation, what would you propose? Bearing in mind other cooldowns as well. Would it make sense to give GNB 2 Excog effects? Warrior having 2 sources of HP increase? Would giving PLD just straight up more mitigation (50-60%) and no additional effects be acceptable, or would that feel boring compared to the rest? These are very much subjective things.

If you played then, why do you need examples?

Because how I perceived the game doesn't necessarily mean someone else saw it in the same way. To give a basic example, DRG's old RNG 4th hit. That alone can lead to 4 different opinions. Either liked, or disliked, or, for the middle, Liked the mechanic, hated the positional part, or liked the positional part, hated the RNG. Different perspectives can help you understand why someone's thought process is as it is. And I mentioned that I did play during that time, mainly so someone doesn't have to go into full detail about the mechanic they wanted to talk about and could focus on what they thought the good design decision was.

Now a quick one on AST cards. Only 1 thing mattered, AoE balance, if you were getting unlucky, you might accept AoE Spear. As of SB, noone liked Arrow, except maybe BLM due to GCD preventing things from lining up. Bole was unreliable as a mitigation tool, so you focused on mitigating/healing with the rest of the kit, Ewer and Spire were also equally bad and you wanted to Royal Road them for AoE anyway. A similar thing can be said for Lord/Lady, you couldn't predict when you would get either one, so, especially in the case of Lady, you cannot plan around it, so you likely just used it so you could fish fore more Lords. It was a fun, unique, mechanic for more casual play, but it fell off when you tried to do harder content.

We have to remember DPS is king and has been for at least 4 expansions now, likely closer to 5 (and even at the end of ARR, it was starting to creep in). One way or another, this DPS focused mindset was going to creep in, we were all still new to the game back then and, as the game got older, we got better, we pushed those limits. This is another reason why it is useful to look back at mechanics you enjoyed or thought were better and actually think, was it better, or was it more a case of ignorance. If that mechanic was in the game now, would I actually enjoy it.

This then goes back to what I have been saying the whole time. People need to stop parroting everything someone else says and think for themselves.

If you want a quick example from me, I will say Monk. Monk used to rotate around it's attacks based on the buffs/debuff they gave. As the expansions came and went, especially in EW, I almost felt that sometimes they were getting in the way. Now, whilst I never expected them to go, part of me was a little excited to see how it would play out, especially since the rotation was changing from 112 to 123. Played it, I didn't care that the buff/debuff management was gone, as the rotation felt more chaotic. It was a bit harder to keep track of and I had to concentrate more. The buff/debuff management was replaced with something else, that I thought was better. Unfortunately, people complained and it went back to 112. It is the same we had before, just without the management. It was mad worse. The worst thing about this is people wanted rotations to be shaken up, but that was apparently too much. I see it as a good example of where people are their own worst enemies.

For your example with sacred soil and kerechole they don’t both need to be a 15 second regen, 15 second 10% mitigation in roughly a circular shape. For example neither of them need the regen but if you are going to keep it only keep it on one. One could also offer more mitigation in exchange for being shorter. SCH could also return the old dys synergy with shadowflare as a key design of sacred soil. Sacred soil also benefited for its smaller size encouraging particular placement and strat arrangement

Basically SB sacred soil should be what SCH has and SGE should be given something actually unique as it doesn’t NEED a sacred soil equivalent, even a short oGCD shield could be an equivalent, or a pankardia+shields as a mitigation.

So, the issue isn't that you would use them in the same place, but more that they are exactly the same. Though I do have to warn about Shadowflare, If it uses an Aetherflow stack, you will lose out on Aetherflow stacks to Shadowflare over the other abilities, if it was as it was in the past you then restrict the use of SS. It might be what you want, I just want to make sure that the consequences are known first.

However, to go back to the original point, that Scholar keep mitigation and Sage have a shield, should that necessarily extend to the rest of the kit? Adloquium and Eukrasian Diagnosis are the same (except MP cost), should they be changed to have different effects? Adlo mitigation and Sage can keep the shield? How would that then affect Scholar when we talk about Emergency Tactics, which Sage doesn't have an equivalent of, with the closest being Pepsis. They achieve similar things, but done differently. I could go on.

At what point does something become the same as something else? When it performs the same duty? Are we going to call basic functions of a job the same, for example the basic cure spell and equivalents? Technically, Cure is different in that it can proc Freecure, but noone cares about that. WHM and AST are stronger than SCH and SGE, but noone cares. Mainly because they aren't used admittedly, but how much different would they need to be before someone goes, yes, they are different.