Rebalancing Suggestions for 4.0

[CrystalRainbow]

No changes to system needed if marcos would be reworked to .0X of a second.

[Freyyy]

I don't usually go on to the forums so I wouldn't have known better. I don't know this person at all I don't have any context on them to come to the conclusion that they were being sarcastic. I'm glad to hear it was sarcasm.

Well the level of stupidity in the post should've been enough for you to guess that it was sarcasm. I don't know this person at all either.

[JustPlainLucas]

MCH and BRD are still mobile. All you need to do is flick the Minuet or the Gauss Barrel off when you're avoiding AoEs or repositioning if you want to still run and gun. If you aren't dodging, then there's no need to be mobile when you're DPSing. People really do complain too much about Wanderer's Minuet and Gauss Barrel giving cast times. WM and GB are 30 percent damage buffs that are constant and have very short recast times. You are being awarded an extra 30 percent in damage the entire run (minus what little auto-attack does) for just standing still, that's it. No waiting a minute for Ley Lines to be ready. No building up Greased Lightning for one Tornado Kick. No stacking Aethertrails to go into Dreadwyrm and then have to wait for Aetherflow to be off cooldown. Flick WM/GB, stand still and shoot. You guys got it easy.

[Nihility]

honestly the only thing i think they really need to do is a really big skill pruning/merging
there's a lot of stuff that's just extra buttons and a lot of stuff that could be merged by converting into traits

one of the few things wildstar did super right was the limited action bars. I know ffxiv can't trim it down to 10 buttons but they could certainly knock off a lot

certainly a big chunk of the 1-2-3 combos could be turned into traits. There's literally no reason to ever go back a step since it costs more tp for less damage

as a fairly simple example paladin could have 6 buttons trimmed down to 3 doing that

[fast blade] [savage blade] [rage of halone] [riot blade] [goring blade] [royal authority]
could very easily be turned into
[fast blade -> savage blade -> rage of halone] [riot blade -> goring blade] [royal authority]
with no impact to anything but number of buttons required

[SpookyGhost]

I find it funny people are using PLD, the job with the least buttons to press, as the example for trimming down buttons.

"Yeah, PLD only has to use 3 buttons to do Rage of Halone... but what if they only needed 1?????"

[Shurrikhan]

Did you miss the memo where all abilities on all jobs will be made easier? Basically the complexity they brought with 3.0 jobs they think that was a bad idea and they're going to "basics"

So it's not out of the realm for OP to ask for everything that just makes their job easier.

However i dislike that future but it doesn't seem there is enough people wanting to keep the jobs that complicated.

If "easier" was the wording they used, I'm actually rather worried. I'd hate to think that the numerous different optimal Monk openers across different skill speeds, for instance, might get compressed, or that we'd have fewer oGCDs to play around with. (Except perhaps those as obviously 'just there to be there' as Power Surge, etc.)

But, if it's a matter of just making it easier to fit them all on our bars, I'll all for that.

For instance, one of the things I'd most like to see is simply slot-sharing. If two abilities are mutually exclusive by some condition, be it stance (Inner Beast - Fell Cleave), range (Quick Nock - Wide Volley), or proc (Fang & Claw - Wheeling Thrust), then you can put them in the same slot. This could include all toggles as well, such as swapping Oaths or Poisons. Ideally, this would be on by default, but you can still separately bind them as before.

The other possibly improvement would just be the obvious compression of combo lines into as few slots as possible, 2 for Dragoon, 3 for Ninja (SE - GS, SF - AE, DE, AC) and Monk (BS, DK, AotD - True, Twin, 1IP - SP, Demo, RB).

P.S. I wonder if we could ever compress our PvP abilities down into Adrenaline bar-fueled sort of Dark Arts-esque variations of our normal skills?

P.P.S. I also honestly hope also that we might eventually seem some macro reworks in order to make them more useful, but also more accessible. I know I'm splitting hairs at this point, but I imagine it would feel a lot better to just, on the actual Actions & Traits page, pick 'create Series' and start tossing abilities into it, to bind with automatic step-by-step tooltip matching and the GCD shown, so you can single-click a full combo and insert oGCDs at will between, without the added delay of current macros. I doubt I'd make much use of the feature myself, but I'm sure quite a few people would like it.

[Norleas]

Instead of making Gauss Barrel not add cast times, add a seperate attachment called Quickdraw Grip:

-15% damage dealt
+30% skill speed
+5% crit chance
+20% chance to trigger Split Shot and Slug Shot's additional effect.

Gauss Round morphed into Rapid Fire Round
90 potency x stacks of ammunition (450 max.)
Additional effect: Removes damage reduction caused by Quickdraw Grip (5s)

Ricochet morphed into Bullet Hell
250 potency
AoE
Additional effect: Targets hit by this take 10% more incoming damage (10s)

[Freyyy]

I find it funny people are using PLD, the job with the least buttons to press, as the example for trimming down buttons.

"Yeah, PLD only has to use 3 buttons to do Rage of Halone... but what if they only needed 1?????"

It's just an example for the whole combo system. I agree that it's currently quite clunky and basically uses an unnecessary number of buttons. The devs should take inspiration from Blade & Soul, where you have a crapton of skills per class but only limited to 14 fixed keybinds (both clicks, 1 2 3 4 Z X C V, tab, F, Q and E, and there's even a backdash skill bound to pressing S twice), most skills replace other skills for a short time when conditions are met and it works beautifully since some classes can sometimes have up to 6-7 skills on the same button, but with such a refined condition system that it just works perfectly.

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

@JustPlainLucas

It only took me seconds to adapt to the ranged casting stances, and as a day 1 MCH main, it really doesn't bother me. I was never the run-&-gun BRD before that anyways, and most content doesn’t require such constant movement of me. Some does, and there are times where dropping the stance in necessary, but consider this:


Wildfire IS my timed stance, in a way. If I want to really deal high damage, I have 15 seconds to do so; no refreshes, no resets, and if an enemy jumps/resets, I completely lose out on that. Timing is everything. That's not the time to drop my stance and with it, my damage and access to some of my most potent skills. Also, as a correction, WM/GB is a trade: 30% more damage but at the cost of auto attack. And let's not forget that we (BRD and MCH) are-yet-aren't "support". The moment we render said support for the party, we are effectively dropping our own DPS. DRGs suffer no penalty for Battle Litany (and never should), MNKs pay no price for increasing heals with Mantra, both very useful party support skills. No, they're not as crucial as MP/TP regens or Requiem/Hypercharge, but it does effectively make the idea of a DPS decrease for renering party support a bit contradictory. All jobs offer some sort of support-like compliment to another. BRD and MCH are just the only ones that take a hit for it.

This is all old salt being brought up once again, and I do hope the devs have taken note. Much like the idea was to balance the tanks by not nerfing WAR but buffing PLD/DRK to perform (roughly) on even footing, I would love it if the same consideration were taken for the physical DPS as a whole. Don't look to nerf ranged so that they don't outperform melee. Being at range hardly excuses us from damage or mechanics designed to hit an entire party, however we generally have lower defense and hardly much to mitigate with anyways. Please note: This is not me saying we must have the defense of a melee dps, but it is me saying they ought to try to even out performance at the highest levels of both types of DPS. If it means slightly more or less complexity, I'm willing to try it, so long as it's worthwhile.

[Brannigan]

I find it funny people are using PLD, the job with the least buttons to press, as the example for trimming down buttons.

"Yeah, PLD only has to use 3 buttons to do Rage of Halone... but what if they only needed 1?????"

Yeah it's crazy how many buttons warriors have to use to do Butcher's Block. It's gotta be at least five times higher than paladins. Wait, no, it's also three. What was I thinking?

Are you trying to say that paladins, in 3.0, use a single combo? Because warrior has exactly 2 extra buttons on-gcd over paladin right now and dark knight has one extra on gcd. I am, of course, not counting AOE since those aren't rotation stuff.

Warrior would be 111 Butcher's Block, 121 Storm's Path, 122 Storm's Eye, 3 IB/FC, 4 Fracture.
Dark Knight would be 111 Power Slash, 121 Soul Eater, 122 Delirium, 3 Scourge
DRG 111 Chaos 222 Full 4 Heavy 5 Phleb 6 Fang/Wheeling depending on direction
NIN I honestly don't remember. Setup should be very similar to DRK.