Thread: what I hope for 4.0 Battle System

What I hope for 4.0 is more emphasis on the role system and reward for playing good beyond you're baseline assignement

Tank should mainly be about mitigation, dps should be the reward for being a good tank. By this I mean that the more a tank mitigate damage, the higher is damage could be Example
Paladin has a rotation and new/reworked tools to increase his block chance. A good paladin would block significantly more than a bad paladin. Royal Authority has now a 30sec cooldown. Every block reduces the cooldown by Xsec. If Sword Oath is activated Royal Authority cooldown is reduced by different mean. Clemency has a more central role, through new mechanic can be instant and has an additional effec depending of the Oath, Shield Oath also grant him blocking chance, Sword Oath empower his next AA.
This way, you effectively encite the player to mitigate and take as little dmg as possible as it directly transfer into less CD on Royal Authority which in this scenario would be a huge dmg boost.
Warrior have more tool to regain health and every health regain mechanic (spare 1-2 defensive cooldown) is tied to his damage. The more a Warrior damage the more he regain health, the more he's tanky
Darknight In a good position with the whole "the better you play the more you dps and mitigate" as DarkArt already boost his highest dmg move and grants healing (not enough imo though...)

I want bosses to do much more damage with their AA so that a HoT + Fairy isn't enough to keep the tank alive. I rolled healer to heal, not to do one aoe shield and then spam a 2500 dmging spell. There is so much wrong when you request a healer to dps throughout the course of a fight. (I'm not talking about dpsing for very situationnal moment like phase transition or shield burst). If SE like the current state of healers, then they should rework raids around having 2tank, 1heal, 5dps. and not 1heal 1support healer.

i would like healer's mana to be a bigger concern.
If too many players get hit by avoidable mechanic, then healer should feel it through missing mana. And ultimately the group would wipe from a lack of heal.
In a sens, "why did we wipe?" "healer went oom" "why did they go oom?" "because too many people keep getting hit by aoe"
So even if you're dps do great dps, they can screw up the raid by taking too much damage.
AoE healing in this game is just totally broken and powerful.

bard and machinist mana recovery mechanic are also broken considering we don't even need them to refill our mana.
A healer cannot realistically be oom with these which makes overhealing something you don't really care about.
I'd rather Bard and Machinist to support in a more direct way. For instance, if the Bard has a song that only last 5sec with a 1min cooldown which increases the healing taken by the group (or healing potency of healer, wathever), if done at the right time, this would reduce the amount of heal a healer has to dish effectively making them save mana. It is more active playstyle and require more thought than "Oh you're oom, don't worry I put my mana song, [10sec later] here you go you're at 40% mana." The machinist could deploy a turret which absorbe a fixed amount of damage around it (like a small shield dome). Again, this would prevent the healer from having to heal the damage, making them save mana.

My point is that increased DPS should be acquired from doing your job properly.
A tank doing a lot of mitigation would do more damage
A dps-support (bard, mach, redmage?) through various cooldown should be able to substaintially help the group heal and dmg.
A dps properly avoid and using his defensive cooldown should take less damage, requiring less heal.
Then, ultimately, if everyone plays well and reduce the heal requirement, then the reward should be that the healer, on top of that, can add his dps.
I wouldn't mind healer's dps to be substantially boosted as a consequence, as long as dps'ing as a healer mean "everything goes smooth and everyone do their job perfectly"
The healer dpsing should be a reward from a good tank mitigation, support and proper playstyle. Not something you have to do 90% of the fight because either DPS can't do their job or SE putted some crazy DPS check.
Finally, cleric stance cooldown being only 5sec, there is a very minimal risk to enter the stance. I would like the CD to be much higher. 15-20sec. This way, if you change stance, it means something. On top of that, you can't be requested to apply your dot every 20sec.

Ask yourself, why in the first play did you roll healer or tank? To top the parser? If the only thing you enjoy is DPS why would you play a healer? to do 20% of a BLM dps?

I would certainly like content that forces each role to focus on that specific role. I enjoy healing, but dungeons are so braindead easy that I'm in Cleric Stance 95% of the time, just because I can. If that weren't the case, I'd get to heal more and actually do my job. As a counterpoint, it would probably alienate players who aren't very good at what they're doing. FFXIV is very focused on being casual-friendly, and I think that's good - it widens the game's potential audience and generates more income for SE, which means more FFXIV for us. But it does place some significant restraints on how hard they can design content.

I'd rather there were tiered difficulties of all content, with slightly higher rewards for running the harder version. Just like single player games. It'd give skilled players a bit more of a challenge, where they can focus on their chosen role's primary function, and it'd give an incentive for less-skilled players to improve.

That said, that's not a catch-all solution, and it'd probably require a fair chunk of dev time to implement (not saying they should do this retroactively though, just for 4.0+). Tweaking job balancing is a part of it as well. At this point, as a WAR main, casual content basically means that I'm a DPS who stands on the other side of the enemy. Bosses require hardly any cooldown use, and I cement my aggro for the rest of the fight with a single Unchained + Berserk'd aggro combo. It's way too easy.

honestly id like to see more leniency into the interdependancy of the trinity and thinner lines between the roles, but of course thats just me. Even for DPS self healing potential, or defense, just something less rigid than "owp both healers are dead lets wipe"

could be anything simple like potions being worth their title, or being able to use phoenix downs in combat. Actually if anything yeah id like to see items like restoratives more powerful and actually useful for clutch situations.