Evolved mode has zero failure states

[KihyiFelhede]

Maybe I'm understanding wrong here but I'm not seeing how playing songs in "whatever order" is what's going on. In lower level content maybe but they do that rn anyways. Barrier is before a raidwide, regen is for a healcheck, yeah? It also seems they get AoEs or single-target DoT depending on what song they use, so order will affect DPS. WHM "spam heals" for dmg bonus is basically what burning lilies for blood lily is. It's just a matter of active vs passive charging. A crap healer will probably burn their MP trying to get an unnecessary burst and won't be able to raise when needed. Skill expression does seem to be leaning more into roles rather than jobs, though.

[WaxSw]

Evolved seems to follow the philosophy of the new Blm in that regards.

Jobs with low to none friction meant to be consumed, not mastered.

I hope the feedback that people are posting is heard and the jobs are improved before release because having jobs with even less meat in them than Shb-DT era jobs is the opposite of what the game needs

[Valence]

Right. I just don't think the answer is walking directly backward. I would rather them do something different with the songs than just say, bring back DoT and proc management as we know it today. Maybe its a hot take, but DoTs are not unique per job or mechanically interesting. Party play may be gone, but it's gone for all jobs across the board, so how is it a BRD rotational failure for the purposes of this discussion? I'm not sure I consider that a unique rotational failure in general even though it is tied to rotational error. I think even before we get to encounters, thinking about the average player or a new player, some reduction in friction with respect to procs/DoTs might actually make sense if someone does somehow struggle with the new decision making here. The passive timers and resource management feeling samey across jobs is a concern for me. I'm neither here nor there with something like Sidewinder, or weaving in general, until I see the encounter design and actually get to test the job out. I can see how this would be a concern for someone who is into current optimization and I guess all I can say is, Reborn mode will still be there and I highly doubt it will do significantly less damage, but who knows. Idk, I'm more concerned about the jobs feeling homogenous to play than mourning micro losses or redundant elements like DoTs.

You asked for rotational failures or mistakes on current BRD.

DoT management has been mentioned. Personally not a gigantic fan of timer upkeep but I'm not gonna deny that it's definitely a core rotational failure that's been in many jobs since reborn—just see the BLM uproar when they removed the timers, same for MNK. Same for combos breaking.

Otherwise all the proc management, preventing overcap, is gone in evolved.
All the priority system of the burst, is gone in evolved (no more proc and gauge rng).

What has evolved brought in terms of rotational pitfalls that reborn doesn't have?

And before I get accused of being a reborn nostalgic, no, I hate ShB+ reborn.

[ForsakenRoe]

Maybe I'm understanding wrong here but I'm not seeing how playing songs in "whatever order" is what's going on. In lower level content maybe but they do that rn anyways. Barrier is before a raidwide, regen is for a healcheck, yeah? It also seems they get AoEs or single-target DoT depending on what song they use, so order will affect DPS.

You adjust your Summon order each minute based on when you need to move in the fight's mechanics, such that you're using Ifrit's long cast times during a time when you can stand still. You get AOEs (Titan followup, Slipstream) or single target (the rest of the Rites) depending on what Summon you use, too. Order doesn't affect DPS aside from 'you had to move during your Ifrit phase so you couldn't get the casts out, this negatively affects your DPS', on a dummy, there's no difference depending on order because you're using all three per minute anyway. It won't matter if you use Wanderer's, Mage's, Army's, or Army's, Mage's, Wanderer's, as you're using one of each, each minute, to build up to Radiant Finale (the 'Bahamut/Phoenix' of the rotation, it seems, the 'the loop resets here' moment in the 60s loop). The only way it'll affect your damage, is if you can double up on Songs within a 1min loop, but in the demo they showed, using Wanderer's took it off their bars entirely, so you might not even be able to play a Song a second time before using Radiant to refresh them all (in the same way that you can't double-Summon without using Bahamut/Phoenix to refresh them)

Skill expression does seem to be leaning more into roles rather than jobs, though.

I guess with the ILVL Projection thing, if I'm a SGE with the SGE Savage weapon, I can swap to SCH and benefit from having the exact same gear, and my weapon on SCH would be the same ILVL as the SGE weapon, just without the melds. So, yeh, if they want us to be more open to the idea of swapping Jobs in a Role, I guess it'd 'work', but it'd suck for those of us who really like one specific Job (or really dislike one specific Job) based on elements that aren't performance-related. Elements like Aesthetics, or Lore, or certain aspects of the Gameplay itself. Like, I have a friend really enjoys SCH, even cleared Ultimates with it, but now outright refuses to play SCH after getting it to level 100, in any level 100 content, because Seraphism is such a bastardization of the SCH Identity in her eyes (in terms of its VFX). I also like SCH, the Lore, the idea of the Gameplay of controlling yourself and your Faerie (EG positioning her to better reach players you yourself cannot, though SE's been hellbent for years on removing that element of Gameplay), and I absolutely hate Seraphism's VFX too, but I put up with it. Hopefully, we get a Character Action Skin for it, so we never have to look at the stupid white robe again if we so choose (and others who like the white robe can keep it, so everybody wins)

Trying to get players to be 'more open to the idea of swapping Jobs within a Role' is not going to work, if said player's reason for refusing to play a Job in the Role is subjective. More likely, it'll Galvanize players (haha SCH joke) to either stick to the Job they like, and complain that 'SE is making it harder for us <Job> enjoyers for no reason' or 'SE HATES <Job>', or worse, the player decides 'I'd rather just not do this level of content, than be forced to play a Job I don't want to play'

[Turtledeluxe]

You asked for rotational failures or mistakes on current BRD.

DoT management has been mentioned. Personally not a gigantic fan of timer upkeep but I'm not gonna deny that it's definitely a core rotational failure that's been in many jobs since reborn—just see the BLM uproar when they removed the timers, same for MNK. Same for combos breaking.

Otherwise all the proc management, preventing overcap, is gone in evolved.
All the priority system of the burst, is gone in evolved (no more proc and gauge rng).

What has evolved brought in terms of rotational pitfalls that reborn doesn't have?

And before I get accused of being a reborn nostalgic, no, I hate ShB+ reborn.

I asked how for example do you make songs more punishing than they are in Evolved because of the fact its the same, its in the post. So if not overcapping then what.

I think DoTs and procs being gone, some buttons being gone that will reduce the overall optimization like Sidewinder, are obvious but don't really make the job more fun. Putting this "back in" just goes back to Reborn mode. That's the point, while Evolved mode may be leaner overall, fail states and skill expression are not "zero".

And yes, you do have make assumptions about encounter design to be a little more forgiving about the changes. Overall, I agree that leaning too much on encounters is a slippery slope, but it higly depends on them following up on their claims of being unchained. What does that look like. If Evolved jobs are "good enough" for one xpac worth of whatever this battle design is, well they will inevitably grow over time and possibly allow for things like procs to come back, new ways to optimize, etc. To be abundantly clear in this way, I want to see more choice driven rotation over time, more encounter variables, not just another DPS button like Sidewinder. I can see how the latter might be someone's preference, I want them go all in on Evolved.

Regarding BLM, it did not lose buttons, it lost fuctionality. I feel like the only way is up honestly. All that's left in DT direction is giving it the EvolvedWHM treatment and dropping transpose. Force you to drop leyline before burst. Lol. I really hope they just do something all new.

[Starrya]

Maybe I'm understanding wrong here but I'm not seeing how playing songs in "whatever order" is what's going on. In lower level content maybe but they do that rn anyways. Barrier is before a raidwide, regen is for a healcheck, yeah? It also seems they get AoEs or single-target DoT depending on what song they use, so order will affect DPS. WHM "spam heals" for dmg bonus is basically what burning lilies for blood lily is. It's just a matter of active vs passive charging. A crap healer will probably burn their MP trying to get an unnecessary burst and won't be able to raise when needed. Skill expression does seem to be leaning more into roles rather than jobs, though.

I think you might be looking for some context on why people think order might not matter. Currently, there are jobs that have barriers and heals in their role that other jobs in their role don't. PCT is a good example, with a heal on Star Prism, and a party-wide barrier in Tempera Grassa. When you swap from that to BLM which has neither of those things...Nothing changes. Healers aren't considerably more taxed, damage isn't considerably more scary, and it's mostly just convenient to have if someone who was supposed to mit something is dead. The impact that these heals and barriers would have to have to be more than nice-to-have would have to significantly increase. As it stands, the most impactful thing BRD songs are going to do is make somebody run into a death wall or an AoE by randomly causing them to move faster when they aren't expecting it. I hope that's not how it turns out, but it is how it has been historically.

Also, BRD already has a song that's better for AoE. Mage's Ballad reduces the cool down of your Rain of Death oGCD, which makes it the best for AoE damage. It just doesn't feel like anything has been added to the job to make up for all the stuff that's going to be gone.

[KihyiFelhede]

Also, BRD already has a song that's better for AoE. Mage's Ballad reduces the cool down of your Rain of Death oGCD, which makes it the best for AoE damage. It just doesn't feel like anything has been added to the job to make up for all the stuff that's going to be gone.

Yeah that's kinda what I'm going for here, it doesn't seem much has changed. Right now its Wanderer 42 > Mage 42 > Paeon 33 to maximize procs but outside of savage you currently can just hit whatever and wait for it to time out with little to no penalty. I fail to see how this is meaningfully removing skill expression when it's just the current way things are. At worst it's just tweaking the current system.

[Moqi]

Evolved BRD's mitigation will not matter much either if they keep locking buffs and DPS behind using all 3 songs every minute, or we are back to a 2 min 1 min BRD meta and boss attack pattern.

Their aversion to stances is comical at this point. There is no getting out of it as long as they keep making everything a multiple of 10s and force you to cycle through all your abilities/modes to get to your finishers. They went the lazy route and just removed DPS buffs. Right now it just feels like they went from a 2min coordinated meta to a 1min personal one, but the actual cadence of button presses/ability usage isn't that different.

[TeresaFortell]

The way I see it is that the failure state seems to transition from rotations to situations, where many actions would be used in different situations. Therefore, in the former context, possible failure states may still occur, albeit at a lower rate.

[Starrya]

Yeah that's kinda what I'm going for here, it doesn't seem much has changed. Right now its Wanderer 42 > Mage 42 > Paeon 33 to maximize procs but outside of savage you currently can just hit whatever and wait for it to time out with little to no penalty. I fail to see how this is meaningfully removing skill expression when it's just the current way things are. At worst it's just tweaking the current system.

I'm trying to figure out if you're just caught up on the songs specifically, or if there's something else going on here. I agree that the songs are a tweak. The current songs can drift, making them more strict, and the new songs are more flexible. On its own, that's not a very big deal, especially if they make fights where that flexibility matters. There are people who expect it probably won't, and they have history on their side, but SE made a big deal about being able to make fights less rigid, so that is one of those things I'm willing to overlook for now. The issue is that we had DoT management in reborn BRD, prok management in reborn BRD, oGCDs that could drift in reborn BRD, and none of that is getting a replacement in evolved BRD. It's just all gone.