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

[Commander_Justitia]

Been a bit busy, but I don't want to over inflate this post unnecessarily, so I will link the original post just above.

Commander_Justitia
https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/...=1#post6638256

You never actually addressed any of the points I made. I asked what CC you could add that didn't destroy boss balance, you never answered. You also made a comment on having different combo enders, which you now claim you don't like? Conflicting statements where I think I'm missing something here.

....

You assumed I mean bosses be affected by CC, but I thought of mobs. The problem of your thinking is that you can't imagine boss fights with adds/mobs I guess, at least not those that are not totally immune to all sort of CC?! It was more often the case in the past that you had to silence certain adds or stun them, or even just slow them to kite them in a proper position, while being out of range of them. These mechanics have become increasingly rare I think. Some reason is that they are enforcing trusts on most of the more casual content, so every dungeon has to be clearable with NPC bots - so by design - the fights are constrained and limited in how they can be made interesting.

Regarding different combo ends I said - "I think it could be more creative than that though." - and later I said "I don't think having a different combo end is particularly entertaining, it was also more a negative example." - I don't think this is contradicting? Then I made examples of different combo variations and including dots, which often had a bit more meaning to it than just different potencies. In my eyes, those were more interesting at least.

I think once again you limit your creativity by how SE implemented these effects in the past. When I talk of poison, I am not talking about buying a poison pot that used to work at lvl50, which did 15dmg per tick or something, which clipped your rotation and was just awful to use. Jobs could have poison stacking mechanics, where your dots get more powerful the longer you apply the dot up to a threshold, potentially spreading them on other targets like summoner did in the past. Or limiting self heals from bosses by having it applied at the right moment. Eh, there are many ways to create more meaning and impact to skills than raw damage numbers.

20% executes were at least a variation of the norm, and you could press a button more when a condition was met. They would have been useful for situation with adds where you need to kill some immediately at a certain time, to create a temporary damage spike. They were usually on a larger cooldown.

Again with resistances, you think of how they implemented it before. And I think you care too much about damage balancing - it is not as relevant as many think for most raiders. Most raiders are not performing anywhere near of what is possible.

I think in the beginning of ARR raids, people often were in tank stances when tanking - only later and at lvl 60 especially people started stance switching a lot. And now aggro management is almost completely trivial. Why? We still had aggro reset mechanics in Neo Exdeath I think. Healer healing Almagest damage and overhealing leading too them potentially being high in the threat ranking. It is just another abandoned concept of RPG games that has been thrown out and deemed undesirable.

Well, at level 50 Rage of Halone was always used. You also had Shield Swipe as an extra offglobal for blocks. I think most good DRKs only used Delirium before raidwides or hard magical tankbusters, they didn't keep it 100% uptime as it did less damage than the normal combo. You say unbalanced again...why is it unbalanced to you? Because all tanks do not have the same rotation and the same effects on the boss? Isn't that exactly what the players are criticizing?

Yes traits are a way, but they probably don't want to balance for every 10 levels how the damage output should be. Maybe it would be easier to adjust monster stats in a certain level range, than each skill individually. I think damage taken should probably increase by 50-100% in very old dungeons/raids.

Whatever, they are doubling down on trusts. It just means we never get another dungeon with e.g. snowcloak 2nd boss with the growing snowball mechanic - these type of fun unique mechanics are all removed, so NPC can clear the content. It is the same with potential skills that could be fun.

[Mikey_R]

You assumed I mean bosses be affected by CC, but I thought of mobs. The problem of your thinking is that you can't imagine boss fights with adds/mobs I guess, at least not those that are not totally immune to all sort of CC?!

Going back, I think I have slightly misunderstood what you said from the start. To me it seemed like you wanted CC to be integrated into damage actions? If so, tying potency to them is not a good idea, because they will be used for damage and not the CC. I'm not against CC in general, I have had an idea that using stuns/interrupts could alter how damage comes out from a mechanic as an example. But this is something that doesn't stop the attack, but change it. If we want to CC mobs, that is also fine, the issue is the main boss.

Regarding different combo ends I said - "I think it could be more creative than that though." - and later I said "I don't think having a different combo end is particularly entertaining, it was also more a negative example." - I don't think this is contradicting? Then I made examples of different combo variations and including dots, which often had a bit more meaning to it than just different potencies. In my eyes, those were more interesting at least.

You said, they could be more creative followed by you don't think it is entertaining. This does imply that, no matter what they do to a combo ender/s, you won't find it entertaining, which does imply they should look at something else. Whilst it isn't a direct contradiction, the implication can be made. Also, I think I have a weird take on this, but DoTs on a GCD combo are just a way to force you to use a different combo. Dots are just high potency attacks after all and the only reason to use something else is to get the full effect. As an example, going back to pre DT Ninja, You used Armour Crush to refresh Huton, with Aeolian edge inbetween (this is an overly simplistic view). Huton is basically equivalent to a DoT, You use it, gives a timer, it ticks down, refresh when it gets low/you won't overcap it.

I think once again you limit your creativity by how SE implemented these effects in the past. When I talk of poison, ..

You put poison in the list of things talking about CC. I wouldn't consider poisons CC but part of your rotation.

20% executes were at least a variation of the norm, and you could press a button more when a condition was met. They would have been useful for situation with adds where you need to kill some immediately at a certain time, to create a temporary damage spike. They were usually on a larger cooldown.

We might have to agree to disagree here, I just don't think an extra button that is useless for 80% of a health bar is interesting.

Again with resistances, you think of how they implemented it before. And I think you care too much about damage balancing - it is not as relevant as many think for most raiders. Most raiders are not performing anywhere near of what is possible.

Then how would you change it?

I think in the beginning of ARR raids, people often were in tank stances when tanking - only later and at lvl 60 especially people started stance switching a lot. And now aggro management is almost completely trivial. Why? We still had aggro reset mechanics in Neo Exdeath I think. Healer healing Almagest damage and overhealing leading too them potentially being high in the threat ranking. It is just another abandoned concept of RPG games that has been thrown out and deemed undesirable.

I'm not going to go on my usual long posts about why the tank stances were bad. Long story short, they punish the tank for having a good party. There is no reason why they cannot do aggro resets with the current model and enmity was generally generated by a Warrior with Unchained and or the rest of the party using their aggro reduction skills. Tanks stayed in DPS stance as much as possible.

Well, at level 50 Rage of Halone was always used. You also had Shield Swipe as an extra offglobal for blocks. I think most good DRKs only used Delirium before raidwides or hard magical tankbusters, they didn't keep it 100% uptime as it did less damage than the normal combo. You say unbalanced again...why is it unbalanced to you? Because all tanks do not have the same rotation and the same effects on the boss? Isn't that exactly what the players are criticizing?

Delirium was up 100% of the time. Damage wise, the combos went Dark Arts Soul Eater > Delirium > Soul Eater > Power Slash. You could not Dark Arts Soul Eater on every combo, so your next best was Delirium. The 100% uptime on Delirium was just part of the Dark Knights damage rotation. Same with Warrior, 100% uptime on Storm's Path, which mitigated everything. Paladin, no such luck. Might have a case if the Strength down was also 100% uptime, but it wasn't. The reason I say it was unbalanced is having a permanent damage reduction on everything causes issues balance wise. This isn't me, this is SE saying it. This is the whole reason they got rid of Protect as well. It is all about keeping a consistent incoming damage profile so that certain jobs were not favoured over others. Whether you agree with that mindset is your choice, but that is how SE balances things.

Yes traits are a way, but they probably don't want to balance for every 10 levels how the damage output should be. Maybe it would be easier to adjust monster stats in a certain level range, than each skill individually. I think damage taken should probably increase by 50-100% in very old dungeons/raids.

Most of the issues have come from potency scaling from before they added the traits. You could, in theory, go back to ARR, see what the potencies were, then copy them (taking into account the EW damage formula change for physical jobs). This would go a long way in reducing the damage done and preventing things from being melted. They cannot change everything though, as PLD never used to have damage on their AoE, so that is extra damage they cannot reasonably get rid of, but it does bring it in line with what Warrior had. It won't be perfect, but it would be better than we have now.

You have missed my point a little here. I didn’t say you can map every single GCD out, I said the expected cadence of the modern jobs is very static because they all follow the same rhythm. You open with a big burst, settle into filler, dump CD’s that can’t be held for the burst around 1 minute then burst again with all your stockpiled resources.

I could swear I read map out every GCD. Guess I'm seeing things.

However, what you have described is every job ever. Every job opened with burst damage, then followed by filler, then burstier phases. Not necessarily every minute, but they were there. Even the jobs that were more sustain had periods of increased damage. Monk, for example, with Internal Release and Blood for Blood, Summoner getting Raging Strikes etc. Even going into SB, this doesn't change. Jobs burst at the start, do their filler, burst when it comes up, the only difference is timing.

We could make a case for things not lining up as nicely on the jobs, for example, Riddle of Wind, Bunshin and Salted Earth all being 90 seconds do not line up with every period of burst, would more things like that help? Having one big burst at the start, followed be several mini bursts, each of which could be slightly different, followed by a big burst where everything lines up?