Can anyone clearly explain "job homogenization" in this game?

[Mikey_R]

I wasn't going to comment in here, but now I have to.

Using the above, yes, you could say, look, they are the same. But some commonalities between jobs is required. Just using the graphic, a ranged attack, gap closer and basic AoE is going to be needed for all tanks.

Going onto defensives. It is, again a necessary evil. Make ones that are stronger than another, since the aim is for every job to be able to clear all content, the 'weakest' one still has to be able to mitigate the damage, with the higher mitigation ones only helping if it actually saves on healer resources. I could go more in depth, but having the tanks have similar defensives for similar situations should (in theory) help out fight design. Again, necessary evil. Same is true for raidwide mitigation (how often is PoA actually useful in changing how a healer would have healed if the PLD had not been there?)

So, going back to the graphic (which I suspect is going right back to ShB), Fight or Flight, No Mercy, Inner Release and Delirium. Fight or Flight and No Mercy are the same (even down to procing another GCD), however, Inner Release and Delirium are different to both of those and they are infact different to each other. Yes, they both provide free access to Fell Cleave/Scarlet combo, but Inner Release helps build to Primal Wrath and allows access to Primal Rend/Ruination, the Scarlet combo gives the DRK Blood and MP, with no way to spend Blood during it, meaning you need to be careful before you press it. It also does not give access to a stronger attack like Primal Rend/Ruination or build up to an oGCD like Primal Wrath.

Talking about the spenders (both ST and AoE), first, I find it funny the graphic for Chaotic Cyclone was used, when the equivalent would be Decimate, however, they, again, are used differently and have different considerations. Holy Spirit can only be used with the Divine Might buff once per combo and you have to use it before you complete another combo, otherwise it gets overwritten, Burst Strike, whilst you can use it once per combo, you can also store the charges and the charges are used with other actions, then, Bloodspiller and Fell Cleave, both use gauge, which builds up at different rates dependant on the job (DRK is a constant 20 per combo loop and Warrior is 10/20 for Storm's Eye/Path), DRK also builds gauge in their burst via Delirium, whereas Warrior just straight up gives 50 gauge and upgrades it.

We can continue this thought with the rest of the kit where, you can say you can line up buttons, but do you actually press them in the same way, do you have the same thoughts and considerations when you press them. Each tank has different burst phases with different nuances and things to consider, which does go back down into the filler aspects. To me, making a blanket statement that knowing 1 tank you know them all, undersells the differences in the tanks.

The same can be said for melee. I've already made a long post about how Monk and Ninja are different, but to see people claim Viper and Reaper are the same baffles me. My cross bars are setup differently and they have a different flow to each of them. But then, if all melee are the same, are they the same as Samurai or Dragoon? I suspect if the question was asked, how are the melees the same, I would get the response that normally follows. They all have a 120 second burst and a mini 60 second burst. They also all use combos, therefore they are the same. Of course, this completely misses everything else about the jobs. A simple question would be, if you took a melee and made it a 45/90 second job, would that then make it not homogenised, or would it still be homogenised because it has a mini burst and a big burst?

Healers are the jobs that I can say are the most homogenised, with Sage and Scholar being the closest to each other. But again, healers need a basic suite of healing and damage to perform their job at a basic level, would it then be fair to count these towards homogenisation where it is a necessary evil? As an example, imagine if all healers were in the perfect state, would all of them having a single target heal, AoE heal, ST damage spell, AoE damage spell and a raise work against that ideal? Would changing them to have HoTs and shields added make them less homogenised?

I also don't like the argument saying, you can just map similar things across the jobs. Well yes, that is human nature. Doesn't matter how different you make things, you are going to have a plan as to where you put things. This button is my tank invuln, this is my short defensive cooldown. Doesn't matter how you fancy it up, if the main goal for that action lines up well enough with something from another job in the same role, chances are, they are going to be put together. That is just common sense. Even if you made a job's 123 RNG like old MCH, you are still going to put them in the 123 slots of that other job where it is a guaranteed combo, because that makes sense. All that to say, button placement does not mean job homogenisation.

[Commander_Justitia]

I wasn't going to comment in here, but now I have to.

Using the above, yes, you could say, look, they are the same. But some commonalities between jobs is required. Just using the graphic, a ranged attack, gap closer and basic AoE is going to be needed for all tanks.

Going onto defensives. It is, again a necessary evil. Make ones that are stronger than another, since the aim is for every job to be able to clear all content, the 'weakest' one still has to be able to mitigate the damage, with the higher mitigation ones only helping if it actually saves on healer resources. I could go more in depth, but having the tanks have similar defensives for similar situations should (in theory) help out fight design. Again, necessary evil. Same is true for raidwide mitigation (how often is PoA actually useful in changing how a healer would have healed if the PLD had not been there?)

So, going back to the graphic (which I suspect is going right back to ShB), Fight or Flight, No Mercy, Inner Release and Delirium. Fight or Flight and No Mercy are the same (even down to procing another GCD), however, Inner Release and Delirium are different to both of those and they are infact different to each other. Yes, they both provide free access to Fell Cleave/Scarlet combo, but Inner Release helps build to Primal Wrath and allows access to Primal Rend/Ruination, the Scarlet combo gives the DRK Blood and MP, with no way to spend Blood during it, meaning you need to be careful before you press it. It also does not give access to a stronger attack like Primal Rend/Ruination or build up to an oGCD like Primal Wrath.


etc.

Sure you can say they are necessities for every job of that role, and that the differences are the nuances like if a skill has a cc effect or a different combo end. I think it could be more creative than that though. I also don't think mitigation skills have to be that similar on similar cooldowns. But is also boils down to fight design being made in a way that supports these cooldowns and mitigation % required.
I also think "balance" is bad for fun. This game is usually very very balanced, down to a few % or sub %. It really doesn't matter to the average player if 1 job would be stronger for 1 patch or addon. It just matters for the few % who raid and want to have it easier. But they impact the "fun" of all others then.

[Mikey_R]

Sure you can say they are necessities for every job of that role, and that the differences are the nuances like if a skill has a cc effect or a different combo end. I think it could be more creative than that though. I also don't think mitigation skills have to be that similar on similar cooldowns. But is also boils down to fight design being made in a way that supports these cooldowns and mitigation % required.
I also think "balance" is bad for fun. This game is usually very very balanced, down to a few % or sub %. It really doesn't matter to the average player if 1 job would be stronger for 1 patch or addon. It just matters for the few % who raid and want to have it easier. But they impact the "fun" of all others then.

CC like? You cannot do anything that will disrupt the bosses patterns as you could potentially break a fight, same with anything that slows down cast times. Heavy could be something, but that could also disrupt boss movement if they every give it back to tanks to control more, so, what can you really do that could be classed as CC that, if it affected bosses, wouldn't completely break fights?

Different combo end? Warrior already does that, wouldn't that just bring things closer to the fabled homogenisation just in a different way? Make them all have different effects you say? Well, don't the combos already do that? What are we really gaining from this? I would argue PLD and GNB have no room for a second combo and if you were to give DRK one, doesn't that just bring it even closer to WAR than people say it already is?

The problem is, people have favourite jobs and if SE decides its your turn to be the black sheep, what do you do? You could say play another job, but I want to play this one. But people don't want me because of the job. There is also the whole thing of balance can be measured objectively and fun is measured subjectively. These are things you cannot really use to shape job design around. Some might find it fun that their job is overpowered this patch and hate it the next when it is under-tuned, whereas someone else would prefer all jobs to be more balanced so they can more easily mix up their play experience without feeling like the job they are playing is impacting the run as much. This isn't just a raider vs everyone else, everyone has to be taken into account.

[Commander_Justitia]

CC like? You cannot do anything that will disrupt the bosses patterns as you could potentially break a fight, same with anything that slows down cast times. Heavy could be something, but that could also disrupt boss movement if they every give it back to tanks to control more, so, what can you really do that could be classed as CC that, if it affected bosses, wouldn't completely break fights?

Different combo end? Warrior already does that, wouldn't that just bring things closer to the fabled homogenisation just in a different way? Make them all have different effects you say? Well, don't the combos already do that? What are we really gaining from this? I would argue PLD and GNB have no room for a second combo and if you were to give DRK one, doesn't that just bring it even closer to WAR than people say it already is?

I just stated how it is at the moment, or was a bit more in the past. CC is mostly irrelevant in this game for some reason, I am not a fan of it. I think it is part of almost every RPG to have bleed/poison/stun/silence/bind/pacify-unarmed/resistances. Most our skills now just have potency...and bosses with big HP or small HP bars...And everything gets put out linearly, there is no snapshotting anymore with skills at below 20% HP Boss HP, there are barely any dots left, so there isn't anything to manage than doing your rotation over and over again in the same way. There is no piercing resistance or slashing down debuff, there is no tankstance swapping out to deal more damage for some time, but take increased damage. Did they adjust mob attack when considering that everyone has now a permanent tankstance as tank? No, probably not, enjoy 20% more mitigation over all content. In other games you need to kite adds, to delay the enrage for example, giving them a slow. You had structures in Alexander raids to use like the monkey/gobwalker things.
I don't think having a different combo end is particularly entertaining, it was also more a negative example. Paladin used to have Goring Blade as a difference side combo, but it was a as dot, now I am forced to use it whenever I burst as just another high potency skill to fit into the burst window. Warrior used to have a dot too. Darkknight had one, they also had delirium that decreased 10% int for aoe damage spells from the boss, also removed because it required the player to play smartly. Now everyone has a reprisal, why? Just even more mitigation on demand for everyone.

And somebody mentioned at the start what other type of job styles you could have. I don't think we have a real buffer class. We also don't have talent trees to mix up how one job could be played. And no, it is not really too difficult to balance. Imagine having a fire blackmage spec here. Or a Paladin that is focused on regen heals and reviving. Or a Warrior that can carry 2 Axes while sacrificing maxHP or something. Or a healer who can reduce his amount of heal skills permanently for more damage spells. This is what I mean with uncreative. You are arguing about nuances inside a mental cage, when devs could go wild with it like they do in Eureka or Bozja. But they are scared of it. Scared it could go wrong. So they probably never will and do the same like every year until nobody plays this game anymore.

If the toolkit is not enough for ultimate fights, then they should probably nerf the incoming damage a little. Instead of making every job so powerful that all older content becomes trivial, as it is now, because they want every job to perform as good as the other.
Let us say you want to balance skills, but the only way you balance is to buff every job over the years to the next damage level, instead of nerfing all or a few jobs a little. MCH for POTD is a good example for that. MCH may be balanced with other dps, but on lvl 60 it is now stronger than ever.