Was BLM not enough?

[Arrius]

The only way to find this justifiable is if there's a big amount of mechanics happening during 2min burst windows that would require a RDM to be in a ranged spot to resolve something.

There are? Because if so, there's no planning around that could save the lost dps by delaying it.

Had in the last Arcadion fight issues that things lined up in a way that going into melee would get me hit by AoE's, so I cannot say it's BAD bad - It's still a "But why?" thing for me.

[Valence]

So it seems like a clash of 'ideals' between two different kinds of people. Those who see 'pain points' as something that allows for skill expression, and those who see 'pain points' as a nuisance that gets in the way of skill expression.

Not sure how you can reconcile that tbh, and it seems like the devs are siding with 'pain points bad', so the first group are losing out.

How can job constraints - and we're talking about actual constraints of design, not fighting against spaghetti servers - get in the way of skill expression?

[Ankhira]

I don’t like when jobs get changed just for raid design. Not everyone raids, and it kinda sucks when a job loses the cool stuff that made it feel unique. Like with RDM dashing in to slash was peak RDM fantasy, now they can just slash the air from range and it looks weird. That’s a downgrade in every way unless you raid and even then it’s not really ‘better,’ just more convenient. My bigger worry is what if they keep pushing it toward full ranged next expansion, stripping out all the melee flavor.

I think gutting jobs for raid convenience is bad. But at the same time complaining about skill expression feels kinda overblown to me, personally. It's not like RDM was hard before, the parts of RDM that were hard are still there, you just don't have to go into Melee anymore during burst. You still have to slidecast, squeeze in as many quickcasts of your big damage without having to use Jolt and so on.

I don’t like jobs being made rigid for raiding, but honestly this RDM change isn’t nearly as bad as what happened to Black Mage. That's just my opinion, though.

[ElysiumDragon]

Let's take Dancer, for example.

Not being able to use Shield Samba during a Standard or Technical Step wasn't a 'pain point' that allowed for 'skill expression', it was a nuisance that locked out critically important mitigation during damage-heavy mechanics. Adjusting this didn't 'lobotomise' Dancer, or 'homogenize' the job, and neither would removing another notorious pain point, that being the Tillana Esprit issue, where you can quite literally overcap due to pure RNG entirely because of how Tillana works.

[Arrius]

I don’t like when jobs get changed just for raid design. Not everyone raids, and it kinda sucks when a job loses the cool stuff that made it feel unique. Like with RDM dashing in to slash was peak RDM fantasy, now they can just slash the air from range and it looks weird. That’s a downgrade in every way unless you raid and even then it’s not really ‘better,’ just more convenient. My bigger worry is what if they keep pushing it toward full ranged next expansion, stripping out all the melee flavor.

I think gutting jobs for raid convenience is bad. But at the same time complaining about skill expression feels kinda overblown to me, personally. It's not like RDM was hard before, the parts of RDM that were hard are still there, you just don't have to go into Melee anymore during burst. You still have to slidecast, squeeze in as many quickcasts of your big damage without having to use Jolt and so on.

I don’t like jobs being made rigid for raiding, but honestly this RDM change isn’t nearly as bad as what happened to Black Mage. That's just my opinion, though.

You can still dash into melee with Corps-a-corpse during Manafication, but now you got at least a alternative when you got stacked up buffs with other players but being or getting into melee range is problematic due to AoE or terrain hazards.
The only bummer for me is that Engagement is not also included to the melee range buff, since that's a oGCD for me during the Enhanced Riposte combo.

[Aidorouge]

If you don’t like a “pain points are skill optimisation” job then play a different job.

Same goes in reverse though. If someone doesn't like a job getting simplified, than they can go play a different job. 3 other casters sitting right over there for anyone who doesn't like the RDM changes.

Personally I don't get the big deal because it didn't have any radical impact on my performance, so they could have just kept the job the same for whatever difference it makes, but the change also didn't "ruin" or "lobotomize" anything that I can tell.

[Daralii]

Same goes in reverse though. If someone doesn't like a job getting simplified, than they can go play a different job. 3 other casters sitting right over there for anyone who doesn't like the RDM changes.

Personally I don't get the big deal because it didn't have any radical impact on my performance, so they could have just kept the job the same for whatever difference it makes, but the change also didn't "ruin" or "lobotomize" anything that I can tell.

Except that the other 3 casters either released simple or are shadows of their former selves.

[Voidmage]

Same goes in reverse though. If someone doesn't like a job getting simplified, than they can go play a different job. 3 other casters sitting right over there for anyone who doesn't like the RDM changes.

Personally I don't get the big deal because it didn't have any radical impact on my performance, so they could have just kept the job the same for whatever difference it makes, but the change also didn't "ruin" or "lobotomize" anything that I can tell.

There are people who mained a job for longer than some here even play the game.
Telling them to suck it up and play another one because it's now for someone else is not how a game should be designed.

And no, this is not regarding the RDM changes but in general.

[Ankhira]

Except that the other 3 casters either released simple or are shadows of their former selves.

What do you mean? BLM has always been harder to play optimally than RDM, and it still is despite the changes (RIP old BLM, I miss you). PCT is also more restrictive with cast times and painting. I don’t mean to push down your experience, but RDM was never that hard compared to the other casters. SMN is definitely the easiest, sure, but calling RDM the ‘last hard caster’ feels like a stretch when its whole thing is about utilizing instant casts.

[bic12]

What do you mean? BLM has always been harder to play optimally than RDM, and it still is despite the changes (RIP old BLM, I miss you). PCT is also more restrictive with cast times and painting. I don’t mean to push down your experience, but RDM was never that hard compared to the other casters. SMN is definitely the easiest, sure, but calling RDM the ‘last hard caster’ feels like a stretch when its whole thing is about utilizing instant casts.

RDM's instant casts are far more rigid and RDM has the fewest tools out of all the casters for on-demand movement.

RDM optimization also involved minimizing fleche and C6 drift which was not always trivial because you needed to make sure your instants lined up on the correct GCDs.