Do you think that Picto needs a nerf?

[Carighan]

That’s actually a fantastic change I’d absolutely adore except for holy or comet as if they weren’t instant PCT would have literally zero instant cast

Yeah that'd be the point. Like Black Mage, justify high damage with a lack of mobility and flexibility via very slow and continuous hardcasts (and hence little weaving room). Can still move while casting them so eh. And there's still instant casts via the muses.

[Carighan]

That’s functionally conflation of two different issues

Melees virtually having no downtime penalty forcing casters to basically be pseudo physical range to maintain rough DPS parity since square can’t design any mechanic that’s not DDR fights is not a flaw with the core design that casters by nature of being casters should be less mobile classes it’s a flaw in the fact that a slightly smaller boss hitbox doesn’t mean anything when every mechanic is designed with the space in mind that the melees never have to disengage with the boss while the range players run marathons around the outside of the arena

Exactly. One is a job design issue (melees need melee contact to deal damage but are balanced for 100% uptime) that begets an encounter design issue (hitboxes reaching all the way to the main city).
The other is an encounter design issue (constant ballet of highly specific movement challenges) that begets a job design issue (casters being as mobile as non-casters in other MMORPGs and nobody being an actual caster any more not even BLM).

[Eraden]

Or....Mao just sayings....maybe change the FIGHTS themselves? Make fights has lots random elements, less mechanics barfage. Gets rid of DRR. Gets rid of two-minute meta. Then can has environment where ALL jobs shine. Is no good altering jobs if current FOUL (in Mao opinion) fights design is kept.

[Carighan]

Or....Mao just sayings....maybe change the FIGHTS themselves? Make fights has lots random elements, less mechanics barfage. Gets rid of DRR. Gets rid of two-minute meta. Then can has environment where ALL jobs shine. Is no good altering jobs if current FOUL (in Mao opinion) fights design is kept.

Two minute meta is a job change btw, not a fight change. Many fights already try to "pressure it", by making big mechanics happen on some of the 2m marks.

But yeah, varied fights would work, but it also depends on what you want to see as the fight. Like, if you just want to make healers less boring, have constant (every 2-5 seconds!) untelegraphed circle AoEs, line AoEs and individual shots hit non-tank targets, for 15%-25% of their health or so. Healers would really not be worried about their lack of damage ability variety at all. Mana would all of a sudden be something to be concerned about. But that's just healers, that wouldn't help anybody else.

If you want to make Picto weaker, ensure there isn't a single window of more than ~2.0s cast time available before having to move. This also invalidates Black Mage of course (except their 100% instant rotation), but it'd be a way to heavily curb Picto as they flat out could not ever cast their motifs barring Swiftcast. Would that be smart? Probably not! But it'd work!

So yeah, "just change the fights" is not really an easy solution, and like "buff everybody else" it also ignores the problem that you can either do A) Sweeping big changes to massive parts of the game or B) just nerf a few potencies of a single job. It's not difficult to figure out which is easier to pull off as far as fixing the actual issue goes.

Does FFXIV need more varied fight design that actually challenges tanks, healers, melees and casters? Yes. Do jobs, in particular tanks and healers, need to be reworked to be less oGCD-centric and actually focus their GCDs on things relevant to their role, like active blocks and actual GCD heals? Of course. Do melee DPS in particular and DPS in general need to be less homogenized and more importantly the DPS as a whole be moved off of all-but-1 being of the static rotation type? Of course.

None of these are quick or easy solutions to an incredibly simple problem though: On average, across the whole game, Picto deals a bit too much damage for how easy it is to play and how trivial it is to survive fights with. Just reduce potancies, done. There are smarter fixes, do those later.

[Eraden]

Two minute meta is a job change btw, not a fight change. Many fights already try to "pressure it", by making big mechanics happen on some of the 2m marks.

But yeah, varied fights would work, but it also depends on what you want to see as the fight. Like, if you just want to make healers less boring, have constant (every 2-5 seconds!) untelegraphed circle AoEs, line AoEs and individual shots hit non-tank targets, for 15%-25% of their health or so. Healers would really not be worried about their lack of damage ability variety at all. Mana would all of a sudden be something to be concerned about. But that's just healers, that wouldn't help anybody else.

If you want to make Picto weaker, ensure there isn't a single window of more than ~2.0s cast time available before having to move. This also invalidates Black Mage of course (except their 100% instant rotation), but it'd be a way to heavily curb Picto as they flat out could not ever cast their motifs barring Swiftcast. Would that be smart? Probably not! But it'd work!

So yeah, "just change the fights" is not really an easy solution, and like "buff everybody else" it also ignores the problem that you can either do A) Sweeping big changes to massive parts of the game or B) just nerf a few potencies of a single job. It's not difficult to figure out which is easier to pull off as far as fixing the actual issue goes.

Does FFXIV need more varied fight design that actually challenges tanks, healers, melees and casters? Yes. Do jobs, in particular tanks and healers, need to be reworked to be less oGCD-centric and actually focus their GCDs on things relevant to their role, like active blocks and actual GCD heals? Of course. Do melee DPS in particular and DPS in general need to be less homogenized and more importantly the DPS as a whole be moved off of all-but-1 being of the static rotation type? Of course.

None of these are quick or easy solutions to an incredibly simple problem though: On average, across the whole game, Picto deals a bit too much damage for how easy it is to play and how trivial it is to survive fights with. Just reduce potancies, done. There are smarter fixes, do those later.

Two-minute meta exists because fights favor jobs made for such fights. DDR-style fights is BORINGS because is all abouts memorizing dance steps. Is borings and has no replay value. Is also major stimulus for changing jobs to be more samey. Unless fight design is changed there will be incredible pressure to make jobs continue to conform. Mao is biologist. Mao understands that if ecosystem is reduced to very simple thing with only one niche, every living thing that exists in that ecosystem will has to conform to that niche. Is not healthy for ecosystem. Fight design HAS to be changed to be more varied if wants more varied jobs.

[HeavenlyArmed]

Two-minute meta exists because fights favor jobs made for such fights. DDR-style fights is BORINGS because is all abouts memorizing dance steps. Is borings and has no replay value. Is also major stimulus for changing jobs to be more samey. Unless fight design is changed there will be incredible pressure to make jobs continue to conform. Mao is biologist. Mao understands that if ecosystem is reduced to very simple thing with only one niche, every living thing that exists in that ecosystem will has to conform to that niche. Is not healthy for ecosystem. Fight design HAS to be changed to be more varied if wants more varied jobs.

Changing just the design of fights doesn't take all of the raid buffs in the game and all of the strongest skills jobs have off of their identical 2 minute cooldown. Also, you don't have to type like that.

[AlgernonBlackwood]

Also, you don't have to type like that.

RP induced brain damage. Many such cases.

[Realfoxy]

OK in this thread I keep seeing people refer to "DDR fight design" and fight being hostile to casters, but I really don't think that's been the case throughout Endwalker or Dawntrail so far, with only a very small list of exceptions:

- P7S purgation I'll accept as being caster hostile, mainly because by the time you finish it you're completely out of movement tools and then you still have to handle chasing AOEs and the harvest mechanics.

- Endsinger EX was pretty rough on BLM at the time, but I'm OK with that because it's an Extreme trial. The fight's greater sin is that it's kinda boring. As an aside, Barbariccia EX was fast paced and reactive, but was very doable on BLM and very fun to handle. More of that kind of fight please!

- TOP P6 was probably the hardest fight for BLM in the entire game at the time of release, but we had nonstandard to handle it at the time and part of the problem was locking BLM into a caster LB3. Also forgivable since it's only one phase in an ultimate fight.

- Dawntrail release BLM was pretty awful, but as soon as Ice Paradox returned the job was functional from a movement standpoint. And from that same view instant despair was an unnecessary change (though it did give us nonstandard back, thanks SE).


I can't speak for the RDM playerbase but I don't recall them being particularly mad about any particular fight. Anyway, the point is that modern caster kits have the movement tools they need.

And while I'm sympathetic to people that want to return to Shadowbringers or Stormblood fight design (and ShB/SB class design to go with it), I don't think SE can put the genie back in the bottle and reverse course so drastically. Especially when you consider that reverting classes like that would make legacy ultimate content harder.

[Supersnow845]

OK in this thread I keep seeing people refer to "DDR fight design" and fight being hostile to casters, but I really don't think that's been the case throughout Endwalker or Dawntrail so far, with only a very small list of exceptions:

- P7S purgation I'll accept as being caster hostile, mainly because by the time you finish it you're completely out of movement tools and then you still have to handle chasing AOEs and the harvest mechanics.

- Endsinger EX was pretty rough on BLM at the time, but I'm OK with that because it's an Extreme trial. The fight's greater sin is that it's kinda boring. As an aside, Barbariccia EX was fast paced and reactive, but was very doable on BLM and very fun to handle. More of that kind of fight please!

- TOP P6 was probably the hardest fight for BLM in the entire game at the time of release, but we had nonstandard to handle it at the time and part of the problem was locking BLM into a caster LB3. Also forgivable since it's only one phase in an ultimate fight.

- Dawntrail release BLM was pretty awful, but as soon as Ice Paradox returned the job was functional from a movement standpoint. And from that same view instant despair was an unnecessary change (though it did give us nonstandard back, thanks SE).


I can't speak for the RDM playerbase but I don't recall them being particularly mad about any particular fight. Anyway, the point is that modern caster kits have the movement tools they need.

And while I'm sympathetic to people that want to return to Shadowbringers or Stormblood fight design (and ShB/SB class design to go with it), I don't think SE can put the genie back in the bottle and reverse course so drastically. Especially when you consider that reverting classes like that would make legacy ultimate content harder.

It’s because by wider MMO standards and even compared to old 14 our casters are ridiculously mobile already

Try to put SB BLM into modern fight design and this becomes more noticeable, it feels like a lot of fights aren’t caster hostile because we have so many tools that allow for movement that it doesn’t come into play. But a lot of people don’t want their casters to be so mobile, that’s part of the problem

[mallleable]

I kinda don't buy the 'DDR fight design' critique either. It's just boss fight design 101 -- dodge its attack while landing your own which can describe almost every fight in any video game with combat ever. FFXIV is not unique. Some attacks will force melees away from melee range, and so melee players have compensate. Some attacks will force casters to run around, and so caster players have to compensate. The bigger problem is that phys ranged jobs are not challenged by anything ffxiv can throw at them which is a problem, so I think phys ranged jobs need to changes to their gameplay more so than casters.