What era of design was your favorite?

[Valkyrie-Veil]

I have to mimic a lot of people in here and say Stormblood.

As an Astrologian and Black Mage main, it felt like those two jobs were at the peak of their design back then.

Beyond just job design, the dungeons, raids, alliance raids, trials, Eureka, etc were all great.

[KageTokage]

I'm almost interested in gearing up my healers just to see what's so crazy about M6S, but thinking about healer kits and every other fight in the past couple of expansions just makes me throw that thought away.

I've come to the realization that even when there are intense healing checks, healing still isn't fun because you end up stripped of resources/CDs and stuck spamming your two or three appropriate GCDs for the situation, though in the case of shield healers you tend to just strictly spam shields since they'll be getting eaten through on every hit for actually healing intensive situations.

[MoofiaBossVal]

Stormblood was when I joined so that is my frame of reference, so I can't comment on ARR and HW. But in Stormblood, the normal game was still hard, namely the normal roulette dungeons and a few solo duties (namely the RDM 60 and SAM 60 fights). Overworld sadly was just as braindead easy back then as it was today.

I found Eureka overall more enjoyable than Bozja. Eureka had four zones to progress through, so you had more visual variety in environments. Eureka's zones also looked much more visually appealing than Bozja's two brown plains. I liked tiptoeing past the dragons and carefully dropping off the ledges in map 2, and I thought that the really tall ice bridges in map 3 looked cool. But Eureka has better gameplay. You pop in and then you casually pull mobs at your own pace to level up, or you can go set up a NM spawn by killing the correct mobs at your own pace. Sometimes an NM spawns and you might go fight that. Rarely there will be a train that you follow for 30 minutes. But it is overall a chill pace. You have time to look around the map at your own leisure, or shuffle your inventory or tweak your UI, or to alt+tab out and do other things and you probably won't have missed anything essential.

Bozja however had a very frantic and exhausting pace, where there is always FATEs and critical engagements going off. It is go go go with no rest, if you aren't heading to the next FATE before it expires then you are missing out on relic quest items and quest progression. I also did not like the queue and teleport system for the critical engagements, where you queue for some fight that is happening way on the other side of the map and then get teleported there. There is no continuity in geography. I much preferred seeing coordinates posted in my map and then running there and then fighting the mob there. There is continuity. I also liked how it was possible to arrive at a NM as it was being fought, or for people to be able to run away and heal, which made it feel more like a world rather than closed of arbitrary gamey boss fights. I know that the walls are there to prevent zerging/graveyard rushing, but after the first couple weeks of Bozja's release I never saw any Critical Engagements fail.

Stormblood was the last time the story really appealed to me, as it was still about a grounded local geopolitical conflicts in which problems could not be handwaved away. Yeah, you pushed out the imperials, but Ala Mhigo and Doma are still impoverished ruins that will remain as such for at least the next 20+ years. Lots of conscripts coming back to find that their homes are ruins, the people they know are dead, their women having been used up and having grown old, etc. And then the patches were building towards a grim world war in which finally the Empire would bring its full might to bear down on the Alliance, and things were looking dubious. But then that all gets thrown out in favor of a Disney story.

[TakoyakiLala]

Stormblood. The jobs were in a pretty good spot in terms of individual identity, trinity functionality and fun factor.

After Stormblood, the jobs became really noticeably oversimplified and it just got worse with every expansion. To the day, I still don't understand why the devs just didn't stop the simplification on jobs at Stormblood and just focused on making minor necessary tweaks and adjustments instead. :/

[Kohashi]

If you seriously think that the add phase (with the 4 robots) is something that exists in today's fights, then I don't think it is even worth continuing that discussion.

Because they do? M7n, M6s, and look how it's going. Also what's so damn special about the damn robots? Each spawns at different intervals and does a raid-wide or a stack mechanic when they reach a certain HP threshold...Much wow.

Also, you can't fool me : https://youtu.be/XswiBorFLO8?si=JM0_TIvd2URd9WWB,

Most spammed button.. stone + aero.. so much complexity, plus almost the same healing spells we have today. Also, it's not like changing stance was like your "healing" spells could have been used to deal damage..naaaaaaaaaaaaaah. you still have 2 damn buttons but you had to switch. What an obnoxious concept, good riddance..lol.

To a degree though, a mechanic that would now just be "press heal button", would be a lot more complicated to deal with when we had less OGCDs, MP was harder to manage, damage dealing was harder to balance due to Cleric Stance, incoming damage to tanks was greater, and self-heals weren't as available on non-healers. So it has an effect on the complexity of the mechanics.

Incorrect on all counts, watch the video link I posted. it's the same spells we had when we did it, minus the useless, obnoxious, no purpose spells like OCD 120s for aggro, instant stance change. I see nothing that stands out in terms of damage and HP variations sustained by tanks or party members. It's what we had to deal with as well.

Fluid aura = useless
Stone skin 2 = cannot be used in combat, shield which was 10% of HP (lel.. wtf.. is this garbage, sch shield was miles better)
stoneskin 1= lol? hello Divine benison? Which is infinitely better since it scales with YOUR potency rather than simply the HP of the target.
Protect = was interesting but also weird, and why was this even a thing in the first place?
Aero 3 = aoe dot, that was interesting, at least for dungeons.

SCH was even in a worse state. Imagine your pet dying and having to resummon it every damn time.

I am sorry.. but I don't get it. All I see is janky, poor design choices with little or no actual impact.

I was miserable with certain healers.

Don't worry, it's still valid to this day..haha.

[Supersnow845]

You are really going to invalidate all of SCH’s design aspects with “imagine resummoning your pet when it dies (~~which was entirely your fault if you let it die~~)”

Like are you even trying to argue in good faith

Not to mention acting like cleric stance and mana management didn’t make WHM more interesting, you can argue you don’t like that design but you can’t pretend it was remotely the same

[Valence]

whatamireading.jpg

I explained but you don't seem to want to even read or replay to the points I made.
Also the replies you did to the quotes that don't belong to me seems to show a clear lack of understanding as well.


Edit: wait, holy smokes, did you actually link a video run with the echo during Creator??

[Kohashi]

You are really going to invalidate all of SCH’s design aspects with “imagine resummoning your pet when it dies (~~which was entirely your fault if you let it die~~)”

Like are you even trying to argue in good faith

Not to mention acting like cleric stance and mana management didn’t make WHM more interesting, you can argue you don’t like that design but you can’t pretend it was remotely the same

The cleric's stance was an instant cast. How can you argue it added so much more complexity than what we had today? No it didn't.. If the damn stance would have completely transformed your existing spells to match the stance you were in, yeah.. I would agree with you, but it provided NOTHING of real value. It's the exact thing we have today with extra steps.

As for the scholar, was that amazing?

Virus = reducing the STR/ DEX of a target. Is this a PVP spell? What the f is this?
Sustain = 8% of pet hp restored, because you had to babysit your pet aside from your team.
Eye for an Eye = 10% extra dmg to target casted on with 20% RNG attached. Please.. end me..
Leeches= esuna
Rouse = Increases healing magic potency and damage dealt by the pet by 40%. While roused, pet will be immune to Stun, Sleep, Bind, and Heavy. Was that even a thing in raids? Is this a PVP ability??? What boss was casting mass sleep/stun? Pet attacking is pretty neat. At least that scrub was useful for something.
Miasma 3 = Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 100 to all nearby enemies. It was nice in a dungeon, but 1.2k mana for 100 potency and a dot of 25? ermm no thanks?
Shadow flare = why is this even a sch magic?????? Additional Effect: Slow +5% = does it even work on bosses? PVP skill again? The f?

All I see are random spells thrown out for the sake of it, with little to no use in a raid setting. I see no cohesion or logic in the kits.

If they had your spells transformed based on the content you were in, then hell ye! let's go.. but by the look of it all, I see you having 2 bars of spells and a great deal of them useless or ineffective in some instances/ type of content. hard pass.. I am sorry.

[Supersnow845]

^this just shows you don’t understand the skills you are claiming to call terrible

Cleric stance had no cast time…..but it had a 7 second recast time. So if you pressed it when you needed healing you could mess yourself up. It wasn’t just pick up and drop off whenever you want

Virus was the origin of addle and feint. Dropping strength and dexterity was the equivalent of old feint then SCH and SMN had over-virus which also lowered mind and intelligence so it was equivalent to addle, everyone else could cross class the feint equivalent

Rouse was used to buff healing magic from the fairy. It was the origin of healing up magic like temperance but SMN could also rouse their damage skills. You used to have more fairy skills, there was decisions on what you wanted to use rouse on

Miasma was a choice between high mana cost and weave space, you spent more mana to generate weave spaces

Shadowflare was a damage competitor for sacred soil, you could only use one, and yes the slow did work on some bosses

Like you don’t understand any of the spells or how they worked

[Kohashi]

^this just shows you don’t understand the skills you are claiming to call terrible

Cleric stance had no cast time…..but it had a 7 second recast time. So if you pressed it when you needed healing you could mess yourself up. It wasn’t just pick up and drop off whenever you want

Virus was the origin of addle and feint. Dropping strength and dexterity was the equivalent of old feint then SCH and SMN had over-virus which also lowered mind and intelligence so it was equivalent to addle, everyone else could cross class the feint equivalent

Rouse was used to buff healing magic from the fairy. It was the origin of healing up magic like temperance but SMN could also rouse their damage skills. You used to have more fairy skills, there was decisions on what you wanted to use rouse on

Miasma was a choice between high mana cost and weave space, you spent more mana to generate weave spaces

Shadowflare was a damage competitor for sacred soil, you could only use one, and yes the slow did work on some bosses

Like you don’t understand any of the spells or how they worked

incorrect.

https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki...al_Fantasy_XIV)

cleric stance has a 5s recast, and it's not like you had to constantly switch between stances to even feel it. You had phases with bosses pretty much like you have today. Damage phase, Heal phase. NOTHING special. The fact that you had the 5s attached to it was absolutely irrelevant. It wasn't like you were spamming it back and forth. Cleric's stance wasn't transpose.. the f you talking about?

dropping dex/strenght was simply shit, why did bosses even had dex or str base to begin with?

as for rouse " Increases healing magic potency and damage dealt by pet by 40%." Where in the world does it imply it's SMN's damage spells? hahah
https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki...al_Fantasy_XIV)


so anyway.. let me sum it. You are arguing for the sake of arguing about an era you didn't even fully understand how it worked, only lament and tilt yourself with the good ol' days.

Okay, you want a cookie?