Thread: Making Jobs Rotationally Easier in 4.0

Originally Posted by Sarcatica

You guys need to remember that speedrun is the only place where not only that group is tested on how good they are, but also how the game works.

This is a point a lot of people overlook or forget. JP and some EU players have massive inherent systems advantages over other EU and basically all NA players. Responsiveness and networking in this game are horrifyingly bad for the absolute top tier of play.

Originally Posted by Reynhart

Seriously, that's your big plot twist ? That the game is not balanced for turtling...now ? No kidding...
It's not as if we were talking about what could be changed instead of just forcing one path on everyone, right ?

Why am I not surprised that you missed the point again?

My point is not that solo-tanking is not balanced currently. It's that it will never be balanced in the future regardless of the changes you make and will make balance worse. I base that on SE's track record with balance and our tendencies as a player-base.

SE can't even properly balance our existing comps and jobs. Fact.
As players, whether it be PLD vs. DRK vs. WAR, BRD vs. MCH, WHM vs. AST vs. SCH, MNK vs. DRG vs. NIN, we have always ostracized the less effective jobs and comps. Fact.

SE didn't force us down one path. They might've wrote the script but we acted the part.

So what actual support do you have that your vision can work? None. Meanwhile, plenty of precedents show that it will be a disaster. That's why your argument has no intellectual honesty.

And, my other point was that based on how this game is designed and how SE handles raid content, solo-tanking will limit SE's flexibility and creativity with mechanics and raid design. How do you design mechanics like jails, time-gates, gavel, etc. which have specific role requirements when you no longer have the role composition the mechanic depends on? You change the mechanic so that it's less specific and more generic. How do you manage add-splits and tank swaps which are forced by ginormous damage-up buffs or vulnerability shifts? You just have to dumb down or remove those penalties completely.

And, my final point was that even if SE goes in your direction, all of the issues I listed require time, dedication, and man-power to deal with. That's time, dedication, and man-power they're spending on one niche style of play in one role rather than the rest of the game. That makes no sense from a practical PoV. I'd rather they take the time they'd waste on your pipe-dream and actually design, tune, and balance the existing jobs better.

Those are my three points. Before you bother responding, make sure you actually know what they are for a change.

Originally Posted by Awful

I hope they don't take our stances away

I'd rather see the tank stances (including darkside) go away entirely and have them all made passive buffs with the damage penalty removed (thereby removing the need for darkside as well).

Originally Posted by Lambdafish

And ruin any diverse gameplay that the tanks have?

I don't think removing stances would do that. Drk would still have to manage it's MP around having enough for Dark Arts and enhancing it's moves to maximize it's performance. Warrior would still be dependent on stacks to execute their moves, all removing their stances would do is remove the one button press to swap to Deliverance/Defiance to use the move they want, not exactly a horrific loss of gameplay diversity. Removing stances on Pld would basically change nothing at all about their gameplay choices so I agree paladin needs some sort of extra mechanic to make tanking with it more engaging, but I don't think stance dependent moves are the solution.

Originally Posted by Khalithar

snip

We can agree to disagree on that one, as in my opinion you have still simplified gameplay and the job feels a lot more hollow. However what I could propose is removing the DPS stance (except darkside as it's more like a bard song than a stance), and simply having the one button for stance dancing. All of WARs moves would then say "when defiance is turned on" and "when defiance is turned off", and PLD could share this.

Remember that the devs have stated that jobs will be as difficult to play as they are in Heavensward, but not more difficult.