Making Jobs Rotationally Easier in 4.0

[SyzzleSpark]

Don't touch tanks pls. Our rotations are fine. I don't wanna fall asleep between tank-busters.

[Jim_Berry]

I think tank jobs should lose tank and dps stances, and rely on actually needing to keep enmity rather than being a dps (like PLD, NIN, and WAR in FFXI).

[magnanimousCynic]

I think tank jobs should lose tank and dps stances, and rely on actually needing to keep enmity rather than being a dps...

Why should TANKS lose their TANK stance if you don't want them to DPS? I get that you want tanks to spend more time tanking, but removing BOTH stances for that to happen? You have some incredibly flawed logic there. I'm not even going to touch on the fact that WAR and DRK have skills that can only be used with that stance on or are changed by that stance.

Besides,

(like PLD, NIN, and WAR in FFXI).

This isn't FFXI. This is FFXIV. They shouldn't be compared and FFXI definitely isn't the official guide on how FFXIV should and shouldn't work.

Moving back to the OP's post, if there's any skills I want to see removed/changed for 4.0, It'd be Bloodbath and Foresight being merged into one skill. Fracture should also be buffed to be worth keeping up outside of specific scenarios.

[Cabalabob]

Why should TANKS lose their TANK stance if you don't want them to DPS? I get that you want tanks to spend more time tanking, but removing BOTH stances for that to happen? You have some incredibly flawed logic there. I'm not even going to touch on the fact that WAR and DRK have skills that can only be used with that stance on or are changed by that stance.

Besides,



This isn't FFXI. This is FFXIV. They shouldn't be compared and FFXI definitely isn't the official guide on how FFXIV should and shouldn't work.

Moving back to the OP's post, if there's any skills I want to see removed/changed for 4.0, It'd be Bloodbath and Foresight being merged into one skill. Fracture should also be buffed to be worth keeping up outside of specific scenarios.

In ffxi tanks didn't have tank stance or dps stance. Their enmity tools were enough to hold hate so it was just a choice to use them or not. It could technically work this way in ffxiv too since tanks don't actually need their tank stance to hold hate, most end game tanks full time dps stance anyway.

Since we're talking about simplifying rotations, what this would do is remove the need to stance dance, you'd just focus on generating enmity or focus on dpsing removing that middle man of changing your stance to whichever you're planning on doing.

It would require some fine tuning and tweaking and in some cases (as you said WAR relies on its stances for half its skills) complete overhauls.

[Duelle]

Why should TANKS lose their TANK stance if you don't want them to DPS? I get that you want tanks to spend more time tanking, but removing BOTH stances for that to happen? You have some incredibly flawed logic there. I'm not even going to touch on the fact that WAR and DRK have skills that can only be used with that stance on or are changed by that stance.

This entirely depends on how abilities are tuned.

Hypothetically, if you removed tank and DPS stances you'd have to make the enmity combos for all tanks the centerpiece of holding aggro. Which means a PLD would have to focus on using Halone, and only when they have a threat lead would they be able to sneak in Goring Blade or Royal Authority. The design would lead to increasing the enmity bonuses on Savage Blade and Rage of Halone, with Riot Blade, Goring Blade and Royal Authority getting a damage buff to compensate for the loss of Sword Oath.

That is, of course, unless we're also aiming to reduce tank damage with this change rather than reducing the opportunities to use Goring Blade/Royal Authority during a boss fight.

Moving back to the OP's post, if there's any skills I want to see removed/changed for 4.0, It'd be Bloodbath and Foresight being merged into one skill. Fracture should also be buffed to be worth keeping up outside of specific scenarios.

This sort of depends on what we want to do with WAR. I still argue WAR should lose the drains (really, DRK should have those for the sake of theme) and focus on using skills to sort of ignore part of the damage aimed at them.

Fracture could be changed into a skill that reduces damage the mob deals to the WAR for its duration in addition to the DoT effect.

[ADVSS]

This sort of depends on what we want to do with WAR. I still argue WAR should lose the drains (really, DRK should have those for the sake of theme) and focus on using skills to sort of ignore part of the damage aimed at them.

Fracture could be changed into a skill that reduces damage the m.

100% agree Duelle!

[Shurrikhan]

This sort of depends on what we want to do with WAR. I still argue WAR should lose the drains (really, DRK should have those for the sake of theme) and focus on using skills to sort of ignore part of the damage aimed at them.

Fracture could be changed into a skill that reduces damage the mob deals to the WAR for its duration in addition to the DoT effect.

The one thing I like about Warrior drains and self-heals is that they better give a feeling of a combatant in the midst of a long battle. The drains particularly also give a sense of overwhelming the enemy with sheer force, or that a good offense can be great defense. If you put just "drains" on a Warrior job page, it probably wouldn't immediately strike me as thematic as someone newish to the concept, but once you've played around with it, the playstyle might well seem hollowed without it.

Personally I just kind of to see Fracture as a skill that (1) deals potentially heavy damage, (2) creates personal bonus damage, and/or (3) mitigates (in the sense of Fracturing an enemy's ribs, their armor, or their arms), based largely off recent outputs and/or inputs. Go ham on an enemy in Deliverance and then Fracture to deal a finishing burst, or Fracture into an improved Zerk-triple-Cleave, or from Defiance and sap enemy attack power based on amounts you've been mitigating thus far.

I think tank jobs should lose tank and dps stances, and rely on actually needing to keep enmity rather than being a dps (like PLD, NIN, and WAR in FFXI).

I'm guessing you REALLY like those Butcher Block, Rage of Halone, and Power Slash animations? Because, that's all your going to see on any short fight then. At present enmity gives the ability to actually invest in holding threat from the offset without trimming your choices down to one combo every pull. Additionally, if you remove the stance variant on AoEs, how would the better geared (temporarily/mechanically-set) OT ever not pull from the MT? They can't differentiate enmity outputs. Are we going to add a second AoE to every tank, identical to the first except in that it has little to no enmity boost?
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The hints at fanfest were super vague, but I think tank attack rotations will remain mostly intact. Fracture or Scourge might be cut or combined with a WS combo (path, power slash). I hope for Sword Oath to either be removed or put on the same button as Shield Oath and for something similar to happen with Defiance/Deliverance and their mirror actions. I also expect stuff like Awareness, Bulwark, Tempered Will, Foresight, Bloodbath, and even Convalescence to be either removed or combined with other skills. A lot of that stuff is useful, just not useful or class-defining enough to occupy a single button.

Then that's one more window you lose that would otherwise make rotations more interesting. I like timing my Scourges into the stance-dance; I just want the opportunity cost of Grit reduced so that I can use that full range of the DRK's toolkit and complexity more viably.

Toggles and auto-swapped keys would indeed be a godsend. Personally, I'd like to the Oaths revised as well, but as you've said, you don't need to remove an mutually exclusive ability for it not to take up space; you just need to stack it with its mutual exclusives.

What's more interesting is I seem to remember them saying something about cross class getting some pretty significant overhauls with abilities being grouped by role instead of class. If all tanks are drawing from the same crossclass pool then that opens up some possibilities. If Flash were made into a targeted AOE (rather than point blank) so that you could pull with it, they could remove Shield Lob/Tomahawk/Unmend. If Overpower was cross-classable, they could get rid of Unleash. Perhaps we'll get some new skills there that don't even belong to any one class but provide a tool that every tank has to have (like Provoke).

But none of that frees up SPACE. It only homogenizes jobs far more obviously. The very word for ranged/AoE tank enmity would just be "Flash". Why do that?

[Reynhart]

I think tank jobs should lose tank and dps stances, and rely on actually needing to keep enmity rather than being a dps (like PLD, NIN, and WAR in FFXI).

If you want that, you don't have to remove their stances. You just have to remove the enmity bonuses on their single target rotation. (And give Shield Oath at lvl 30...)

[Ilan]

I think tank jobs should lose tank and dps stances, and rely on actually needing to keep enmity rather than being a dps (like PLD, NIN, and WAR in FFXI).

And if that happens most Tanks will not play Tanks anymore because the classes will become boring as hell. Not to mention that Fates and Beast Tribes will be even more annoying then.

[Duelle]

And if that happens most Tanks will not play Tanks anymore because the classes will become boring as hell. Not to mention that Fates and Beast Tribes will be even more annoying then.

As I've said before, that depends on how everything else is tuned. If you take away stances, you have to adjust every other ability because you're likely to bake in enmity from your tank stance to certain skills and the damage from your DPS stance in other skills. You'd also have to introduce some way of increasing mitigation (assuming the increase is not passive), which in practical terms means Halone/Delirium/Storm's Path would definitely have to be equalized (tank gameplay would have to point to "use this combo to increase your mitigation" instead of each having a different debuff attached).

Really? So an augmentable drain ST attack, a drain AoE, a drain ST attack with an attached mitigation duration, and a physical-damage drain duration buff are EVERY POSSIBLE variant by which a drain might be used in a job?...
Haven't you seen at least that many player-made suggestions for new and unique drain ideas just across the posts you've frequented over the last couple years?

I can give you two that I suggested in a thread a while ago: A skill that restores HP whenever you take damage, and a skill that converts damage taken from the next hit into HP. Problem is, and I suspect I'm right on this one, those weren't given to DRK because of the overlap between WAR and DRK when it comes to drains. And the devs were too busy hitting CTRL+C => CTRL+V while tabbing between DRK and PLD. In fact, if WAR ends up getting a version of Umbral Shield (the first of my examples) in 4.0, I'm going to laugh and somehow not be surprised.

I have no idea know what intent you think that "poorly implemented system" pointed at though. Was it poorly implemented because it took longer to regenerate full effectiveness, despite already having a cooldown, and because it forced a restart on every use?

A tank that increases their EHP via increased health pool and increased healing received shouldn't have half of that system (the increased healing received part) sine wave with resource consumption. Sure, some might find it thrilling to have their chances of survival go down the toilet with some bad luck or missed timing between themselves and the healer, but tanking and healing hinge on reliability. This is also why some but not all RNG-dependent mechanics work for either.

Or is it just a "poorly implemented system" whose intent you applaud on the assumption that it kept Warriors from leaving tank stance as often? (It didn't. It did the opposite.)

I can admit I looked at the design on paper back then. I didn't bother to finish leveling MRD => WAR until after 2.2. And all your comment here tells me is that the problems were already brewing if that was indeed the case.

I get that, but... If the PLD is hiding behind his shield, the DRK behind his sword, and the WAR behind his 'manliness' for all the same sort of mitigation and eHP, what if any difference in playstyle does that really create?

The way you worded this is giving me flashbacks of the blood tank vs blink tank thing from FFXI. A tank is there to take damage, and even if all tanks take damage, you can still make them different from each other with how the damage is handled.

PLD is currently designed around shield blocks with cooldowns that reduce damage taken.

WAR, IMO, could focus on actions reducing damage taken (the beast within sort of numbing the WAR to pain) and Wrath should play a bigger role than it currently does; right now it's a build-consume resource where 5 stacks is the only thing that matters. Assuming I were to put others through something I wouldn't inflict myself with (because I hate what I'm about to suggest), I'd consider pushing WAR towards active mitigation with things like temporary damage reductions or mini-stoneskins (because the beast doesn't feel pain). Inner Beast already somewhat leans in that direction, and I feel WAR needs more things like it.

DRK is where things get murky. Right now they're an edgy PLD with an extra button to push (Dark Arts). This is where the drain theme would help them stand out in exchange for their parry focus, with skills that instead of mitigating damage restore some HP when damage is taken. You could throw in a skill that negates damage taken from the next attack to restore a capped amount of HP. Passive mitigation to offer synergy with healers would probably also help. Then it's be a matter of turning Dark Dance's effect into either a full parry buff or a full evasion buff (or neither and have it do something completely different).