Thread: Making Jobs Rotationally Easier in 4.0

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I would presume in that case none of those skills would require Darkside, rather than being removed by extension...

That is correct. My point was to remove the MP drain component by removing darkside and having the main gameplay choice for Drk focus on managing MP for using Dark Arts as often as possible and weigh it against using a move now or saving it for later so moves like Blood Weapon and Blood Price still have a purpose. It would also have the added effect of removing the restriction on Blood Weapon which is something I feel should have been done a while ago. The cause of me thinking on this came from playing pld a lot more lately. I been tanking a whole bunch as drk the last few months and I decided to revisit pld again and I really noticed how there is basically no diversity in it's gameplay regardless of the stance you're in which lead me to thinking if they were even necessary in the first place.

I'll stand by my assertion, I still think removing the stances and the damage penalty is a good idea. However, I will concede at this point that if they do that, they should add more interesting choices and combinations with the abilities we have and the new abilities we get.

I also stand by my other assertion that Pld absolutely needs SOMETHING to make the gameplay a little bit more engaging. I don't know what that could be but I still don't think stance restricted moves are the solution.

Well seems the goal is to keep rotations across the board "the same" as lvl 60. Namely take this to mean nothing will get more complex than mnk or less complex than pld. On the side of tank stances, this one is kind iffy....on one side we have warrior and i feel stance dancing is a very important mechanic to its playstyle. That being said though I could see PLD doing without stances, and hell maybe even bring its shield into play more. Wouldn't even have to be a massive overhaul just increase the overall enmity of their RoH combo (to be on par on what it would do in shield oath over equal amounts of time) As some have pointed out most tank in DPS stances anyways so this would be ok and could bring more interesting mechanics to play with shield skills, even passively, like having shield based skills (shelltron, shield swipe, shield bash, etc) cause a deteriorating %chance to block buff over like 3-4 secs. I feel pld would benefit from a very active mitigation playstyle.

idk too much about drk tanking to be honest, got it to 60 then kinda stopped >.> Still could see it using mnk like stances for its darkside and grit playing into an "action used" kinda system with blood weapon and the mitigation one (forgot name) "forcing" the stance to persist for its duration.

Stances just need to be more different from eachother.

Take Defiance/Deliverance. When you're in Defiance you have access to a high potency single target ability that mitigates damage for a short period, an AOE with a high enmity multiplier, and a buff that removes the damage penalty from the stance. When in Deliverance you have a high potency single target ability and an AOE. The only difference between IB/FC and SC/Decimate is that the Deliverance variants trade actual beneficial effects for more potency. IMO, that's super boring and honestly makes me feel like those skills don't even need to exist - I could just keep IB/SC and Deliverance would add a potency buff to them but remove the other effects. You'd even have Unchained which could work differently in Deliverance, so even with this minor thing you'd have the same stuff, less buttons, and an entire new skill that you already had with a different effect.

(Side note: Equilibrium is a good example of a skill changing in effectiveness based on stance - it can be used in 2 very distinct ways and your stance actually matters)

Darkside isn't even a DPS stance, it's just sort of a thing you have on all the time - though dropping Grit does give you access to Blood Weapon, which is cool and all but it's basically just a "do more DPS" button.

Sword Oath is the worst of them all because it changes nothing but makes you auto more - boring, pointless, zzzzz.

I hope that stances are something they look into in 4.0, there's a lot of potential with stances that weren't really explored in 3.0 that hopefully were just a result of time/budget/etc.

I'm not really going to go into the detailed math since I don't care enough to do that much work but just at a quick glance, the average Gritless GCD of a DRK is probably around ~250 potency (assuming 100% delirium up-time) without PS.

The average potency of a PS combo is ~223.

Ignoring the MP calculations (grit activation MP cost vs. MP loss from using PS instead of DASE / Delirium rotation since I don't want to do all that math), you'd have to be forced to PS ~3 times before you'd make up the lost potency of single Grit activation. I remember Grit having a 2.7x enmity modifier but with a 0.8x damage modifier so it's clearly not worth it to switch to Grit for PS. Yea, after multiple Grit PS combos, you'd eventually overtake Gritless PS spam in enmity but at a huge potency cost. In Grit, just looking at GCDs, you're losing ~45+ potency per GCD.

I don't really think you ever need enmity that desperately in this game under normal circumstances. Even in your opener as a sad DRK without a NIN or WAR, you aren't suffering the GCD cost of activating Grit, just the potency per GCD penalty, so while it still sucks to be in Grit, it's not as bad as having to activate Grit.

Regarding stances, the problem is quite simple.

A GCD in this game has too much value and tank stances have very little value (if any positive value at all).

As we've seen in basically all the math, a GCD of 0 potency is simply too big of a trade-off given the other penalties of tank-stance and the benefits just aren't impactful enough. Even for a job with an oGCD stance swap and 2 very strong abilities locked to their tank stance, they still avoid tank-stance like the plague.

Why? Balance. The gains you get from Deliverance dwarf the gains you get from Defiance. If the gap wasn't so titanic, tank stance would be used more.

I don't think the solution is to just remove stances altogether. That's like saying the solution to job balance is to just completely homogenize jobs. Different but equal is a hard idea to execute especially when you have a player-base with a few at the top who really analyze efficiency and create norms that others emulate but I don't think you need perfect balance in this case. Tank stance just needs something to give it value regardless of meta because enmity and eHP clearly aren't enough. Stuff like Unchained and Equilibrium are a step in the right direction and give tank stance real value when a WAR pulls but they aren't enough to keep the stance relevant outside of initial enmity. Just look at the blatant imbalance when you compare those to DPS-stance incentives like Fell Cleave, Decimate, Sword Oath, and Blood Weapon.

I also think it's a bad thing to remove stances because they give tanks a real spectrum of skill progression. Tank stance acts as training wheels for newer tanks that can't effectively snap aggro or use dCDs appropriately and SwO / Gritless / Deliverance gives tanks room to grow and an outlet for their ability to read a situation. Giving a tank everything by default just means they'll never have to really understand why they have it.