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

[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.