More Customize Skill

[Shurrikhan]

Sorry, but this would be a waste for PVE. Customization never works. Someone will always find the optimal loadout and everyone will roll it. Suddenly there's no customization, just people being kicked for yet another way they can be bads.

I seriously have to wonder how many of the people saying this have actually done any fight by fight theory-crafting for themselves. I've consistently outperformed others at equal or higher item/gear levels when using so-called "non-optimal" or "shit" specs.

EDIT: (And I don't just mean that I was a better player than them. In fact, that was rarely the case. But by crafting a slightly more personally attuned spec, I had more control over how I could react to mechanics, could better stretch my ability to capitalize on opportunities or be less disadvantaged by deadzones, etc., generating greater total dps over the length of a fight or putting out higher dps on key targets than my higher theoretical dps contemporaries (each playing about as best as theoretically possible). Moreover, by crafting that spec myself, I knew what adaptations I'd have to make, at what points, in what compositions or conditions, and to what degree.)

The issue with PvE customization isn't even necessarily the effort to balance it. It's primarily the distance for the majority of the community between those choices and the actual maths behind them, and/or the adaptations possible to support them for a higher total raid dps.
It's not the "elitist jerks" that make customization all for naught. It's the ones who cannot so much as imagine an adaptation of playstyle that's not detailed out step by step, priority by priority, on a forum page written by someone seemingly authoritative.

[Bourne_Endeavor]

I seriously have to wonder how many of the people saying this have actually done any fight by fight theory-crafting for themselves. I've consistently outperformed others at equal or higher item/gear levels when using so-called "non-optimal" or "shit" specs.

Optimization does not inherently mean people will perform their job better. You can take all your stat point on Bard, toss them into STR and still blow someone away if their rotation sucks. Stats only account for so much at the moment. If they ever moved towards a skill tree system, those stats become significantly more important since it could impact things like say, making Blood for Blood have additional damage increased for less defense. If a change like that proves to be "the best" in terms of overall risk/gain, you will be expected to take it. We're already seeing it with the current meta widely shunning White Mage, Paladin and Monk. When the buffs to Astro came, White Mage clears dropped nearly 50%. That's the raid community tossing it aside because Astro is simply a better White Mage now.

[Shurrikhan]

Optimization does not inherently mean people will perform their job better. You can take all your stat point on Bard, toss them into STR and still blow someone away if their rotation sucks. Stats only account for so much at the moment. If they ever moved towards a skill tree system, those stats become significantly more important since it could impact things like say, making Blood for Blood have additional damage increased for less defense. If a change like that proves to be "the best" in terms of overall risk/gain, you will be expected to take it. We're already seeing it with the current meta widely shunning White Mage, Paladin and Monk. When the buffs to Astro came, White Mage clears dropped nearly 50%. That's the raid community tossing it aside because Astro is simply a better White Mage now.

To be clear, I meant not only those who equipped an "optimal" build, but also played it in its (basic) "optimal" form, (e.g. following the suggested priorities, etc.). I didn't outperform these people just because I was better at handling mechanics under pressure, or made fewer rotational mistakes. Its because either I used a build that allowed slightly more leeway in order to capitalize on opportunities (thereby especially increasing my contribution to the important parts of a given fight), or understood by the very nature of having crafted my own build for a particular fight that adaptations would be necessary, when, and why. Now, XIV can't really emblemize those considerations given that it's never had much by way of customization; heck, even by Mists, WoW's only been emblematic of it on a class by class or spec by spec basis. But the inquiry that goes into building those specs with particular contexts in mind, even if the same build must be used for wildly different ones due to adjustment constraints, does tend to make better players, especially if they have an understanding of the other classes in their party. The manic tunnel-vision of "approved specs only" rarely does so well in that regard. (Again, this being the case when there is actual customization to be had, not only a semblance of it kept for nostalgia.)