Almost into 7.3, what you think about the *improved* encounter design?

[Mawlzy]

It is possible in a player party but it's really stressful, even with the best of tanks I know, I feel forced to use PoM to keep up with the throughput.

Thanks. Does not that make the dungeon more interesting than the current design?

Some players might like to try that full pull as a challenge. It adds replayability. And the fact a level 41 dungeon has a more difficult W2W than a level 100 suggests the current design has flopped.

[Alice_Rivers]

It is more interesting, though fundamentally it's the same design, just that you can pull five groups (and the boss if you're completely mental) instead of two. I wouldn't mind removing the walls again but that would risk putting more pressure on tanks (some of who are already complaining about the pressure to go W2W), I'd personally prefer to fix the tank-healer-content relationship as is to make a more stable foundation to build on.

I do agree however, that low level dungeons being harder than high level ones is somewhat disappointing.

[Alahard]

It is more interesting, though fundamentally it's the same design, just that you can pull five groups (and the boss if you're completely mental) instead of two. I wouldn't mind removing the walls again but that would risk putting more pressure on tanks (some of who are already complaining about the pressure to go W2W), I'd personally prefer to fix the tank-healer-content relationship as is to make a more stable foundation to build on.

I do agree however, that low level dungeons being harder than high level ones is somewhat disappointing.

The big reason for the wall-to-wall is the lack of danger from the adds. They simply don't threaten the group enough when mass pulled.
Honestly we haven't had a mass pull be threatening since the stormblood leveling dungeon that was in the stepps.

Additionally so much defensive power and self healing was given to the tanks also, that if there was ever a dungeon where tanks are really threatened, it would primary come from both A) dps just doing bad dps leading to all cds being burnt, and B) Healers being caught unaware because when have they last actually healed in a dungeon.

Of course the community is going to be applying this pressure onto the tanks.
And without class redesign across the board, it's never going to change no matter how many adds get thrown in the tanks face. They might as well let you pull right into the boss room, because tank busters do squat when your tank's 30% cd also gives regen+health shields, and their basic 15 sec mit is also a personal excog.

[Alice_Rivers]

I'm in full agreement with everything you said there.

I see the issue primarily as a balance one, one of a triangular nature, with Content, Healers and Tanks as the three points. Each has it's own problems, the biggest problems for tanks are that content below extreme hits like a wet noodle against their mitigations, much less their healing capability and that there is no tank gameplay loop besides grab enemies and mit/heal. Healers biggest problems stem from the tank problems, if nobody takes damage then there is nothing for us to use our kits on (and given "normal content" damage, even when raidwides go out you can generally ignore one or two before you actually heal), add to that tank (and other) healing kits increasingly invading their space and the fact that healer damage "rotation" is one button; I don't see that as a problem inherently, it becomes one because we have nothing to do with our kits. All of which shines a blinding light on the issues that content has, mainly that nothing does any damage and interaction with the party is minimal at best, add to that the fact that all content is built to the same formula, the same one minute raidwide timer and you have a recipe for everyone being bored.

It's little wonder so many people don't even learn their jobs in such an environment, even though this content (along with job/role quests) should be teaching them to do it at at least basic level so they're not completely unprepared if they try extreme or savage. As I see it it's impossible to fix the root problem without addressing all three points of the triangle but the easiest to adjust quickly are the tanks (strictly because of how much testing they'd have to do to fix content) but fixing the content would be the most consequential route. I know a fair number of people will say "you can't balance jobs around dungeons, you'll break savage and ultimate" and they're right, but there's no reason they can't balance dungeons around jobs which is what they should have done from the start.

[0blivion]

It is possible in a player party but it's really stressful, even with the best of tanks I know, I feel forced to use PoM to keep up with the throughput.

Good thing you should be using PoM on cooldown anyway.

/e: That said, yeah, the fact that tanks are healers makes the gameplay a shitshow at times. I like the brainlessness of WAR, but damn, 3 dps 1 tank is nearly always better, lol.

[Shurrikhan]

Say it with me kids

You can’t improve encounter design on the back of awful class design

This seems a bit of an overstatement. Mostly because...

...We very literally can have better encounter design even with the kits we have now. Present encounter design generally doesn't nearly push the limits of even what kit opportunities we have already.

Or is there something about, say, bloated healing abilities --that kit itself--- that makes it impossible to use more than a portion of it (or, to virtually ever need to use GCDs)?

Is there something about our tank kits being excessive for the vast majority of present content that means that content would be unable ever to pressure it?

Is there something about our DPS CDs that enforces that we almost never have DPS checks beyond the final enrage?

Or mightn't those have almost entirely to do with tuning and/or the very basics of encounter design -- things we could absolutely improve upon even now?

The tools we have and the puzzle to use them in are two sides of the same coin. The deeper the class design, the more undermechanics we have to work with, but each fight can likewise supply their own, novel mechanics and without sufficient tuning, the first either will not work or will not matter.

To insist that you can't even have decent tuning or a modicum of creative encounter design so long as striking dummy play isn't up to one's preferences just adds excuse to getting shit fights with shit role interaction.

Do I want more interesting class design? Absolutely.
Heck, would I revamp healers practically from scratch if I could? Also yes.

But neither of those things are necessary for encounter design to be more engaging.

Job design and encounter design BOTH leave much to be desired, and the first isn't going to get much better without vision as to more creative encounters (that in mainstay content and/or outside of it -- hopefully both) in which to leverage kit additions and the second has very real room for improvement even now that present job design has yet to bottleneck.

Sorry if this comes off as semantic or a nitpick, but having seen similar claims of "We can't have X until we get thing Y (that is only one among multiple factors involved in X)" like this in other MMOs, claiming the helpful as necessary for any improvement has rarely seemed to go well -- usually offering defensive development more ammo to call players unappeasable.

Tl;dr: Present job design is limiting, yes, but there's no sense waiting until job design is rehauled to actually make decent use of even our existing kits. Small changes asap on both ends would be a good investment; it needn't be all or nothing, let alone job rehauls before we actually even, say, get fights tuned as to make good use of the whole of any healers' full oGCD heals kit.

I think you've mostly said as much yourself elsewhere, Snow, so I'm guessing/hoping this is just picking catchiness over actionability.

[Valence]

I think this is the biggest downgrade of dungeon design.

We've seen on these boards that tanks not pulling W2W are very naughty indeed. Okay, but maybe the problem is they should only be able to do so in a strong party in which tank and healer are having to think about the other's resources.

Is it possible to pull all the trash to the first boss in Stone Vigil? I've never managed it with NPCs, but I'm pretty bad.

Dzemael Darkhold. I know it annoys people, but there are some really good pulls in there and even dps needs to be on their toes.

There are many other examples from ARR where the trash made the dungeons engaging.

You couldn't even just mass pull most ARR dungeons back then either, unless you really knew what you were doing. And even then.
It became a bit easier once they decided to axe ARR trash HP by half at some point during late HW or early SB I don't remember when. But still, powercreep and sweeping battle system changes weren't that entrenched into old content yet either.

[Merrigan]

I think this is the biggest downgrade of dungeon design.

We've seen on these boards that tanks not pulling W2W are very naughty indeed. Okay, but maybe the problem is they should only be able to do so in a strong party in which tank and healer are having to think about the other's resources.

Is it possible to pull all the trash to the first boss in Stone Vigil? I've never managed it with NPCs, but I'm pretty bad.

Dzemael Darkhold. I know it annoys people, but there are some really good pulls in there and even dps needs to be on their toes.

There are many other examples from ARR where the trash made the dungeons engaging.

Amen.
This is a huge problem with current dungeon design. A tank should be able to gauge its level (and that of its healer) and adapt the pull accordingly. Completely removing this dimension by putting up artificial walls mutilates this role, annoys players who have the means to go faster, and harms newcomers in the sense that the “W2W” rhythm becomes an implicit obligation. An obligation that, paradoxically, would not exist if tanks were forced to go through this selection process again when they pull.

[MayuAmakura]

As previous players have mentioned, the ARR dungeons don't allow pulling that many mobs + sync is what keeps you without crucial spells. But recent powercreep and busted abilities has many endgame dungeons very easy. It's nothing of improved encounter, just same old formula and the fact that we are still getting corridor dungeons is quite sad. It's just one big run in a straight line and call it a day. There's nothing new or refreshing.

[Raikai]

I was doing some Alliance Raid roulettes yesterday and I never realized how they offer more distinctive mechanics that isn't a DDR. And that's ever since forever, back to ARR alliance raids.