"closing the DPS gap"

[ThirdChild_ZKI]

PS4's fine. I've got room to spare with the way I've customized my HUD. I already know where I'll put the UI elements.

[Tint]

i think it never was intended to close the gap between the bad and the good players, but the gap between good (or let's say better than average) and very good. you lost your buffs too easily while doing mechanics, making it impossible for many competent players to clear the dps checks in alex savage and only the best of the best were able to clear the content. the rotations are still too complex for bad players, yeah, but the better than average players will likely be able to deal enough damage to clear endgame content with these changes.

[HiroKirito]

I took the new changes, in a couple of ways.

From what they have shown it does look easier to me atleast, I think rotatations, buffs etc will be easier to maintain for more players making endgame more accessible for them, however I'm hoping mechanically savage etc will be more complex that the last tier to accommodate these changes. Even with the changes I don't see clear rates for savage jumping through the roof, sure some people didn't do great dps but I think for the majority of players who attempted but didn't clear it, would have been down to group competency and mechanics that holding them back.

On the other hand I think the visual cues will help newer or "bad" players alot, I look at this way, each job had has one built effectively around thier core rotation or utility. If that nice fancy HUD element isn't lighting up for you then basically it's the game telling you that you suck and something needs to change for you to light it up or maintain it for some jobs.

[Rhaja]

My take from it boils down to this; They are rewarding good play now instead of punishing bad play.

[Shurrikhan]

My take from it boils down to this; They are rewarding good play now instead of punishing bad play.

While that would be appreciated, if the case, I don't see how these changes have largely pointed in that direction. Note also that the line between the two is incredibly thin.

To be clear though, let's go ahead and define the two.
How much "good" play is there available within a given job's gameplay in a give fight compared to "bad" play.
If you see the potential for good play as being the narrower portion, then know that by advantaging it, you are disadvantaging anything that is not it -- the majority of gameplay, and therefore narrowing acceptable play.
If you see the "bad" play as the narrower portion, then punishing bad play acts more as a trap that steers you away from very specific forms of play, likely found to be less interesting, intensive, engaging, or simply less productive than everything else that remains outside of "bad" play, leaving a much wider range of options open.

To me the two are indistinguishable, but I can see how it at least lends itself to a "glass half full / half empty" connotation game.

That said, I'm not sure anything has changed but for BLM. They now have one concern when under the effect of Enochian, down from two. That's it. That's your reduction to the potential for "bad play" in job-unique mechanics.

For the rest, I'm seeing either no change or an increase in punitive output-manipulation. Take Paladin's shiny new Lightning Sword move (Requiescat), for example: it acts as Fight or Flight over time atop its mana-dependent heavy hit if and only if the Paladin's mana is over 80%. And this is after having given Paladin a second, worthwhile spell. Effectively, it becomes: don't touch your mana-based utility as Requiescat's coming up, and you better pay back any time you spend mana asap, lest you lose your stacking Fight or Flight version 2 buff. Bad play becomes "anything that fails to achieve 80+% mana at 80 second intervals".

How does that differ from the narrow "good" play of CD stacking or effective CD holding (where any failure to do so maximally is "bad" or at least "worse" play), which is 90% of every DPS's gameplay decision-making, regardless of job? The only difference I'm seeing is that I can make an obvious rotational difference in the short window of a CD (RS, HE, WF, BFB, IR, all these hefty contributors to skill-gap) to try to draw a little bit more out of it depending on the order of my abilities cast, my reactions, and my awareness, whereas this addition seems far more vague—in short, less exciting insofar as I can picture it. It's like timing ones Berserk, except that success is rendered not by action (e.g. offensive CD-popping) but by inaction (not spending mana if too close to the CD).

[UnstablePersonality]

The bard/machinist change actually may, as it gives them a higher chance of damaging while moving..which I'm sure most don't do (I'm sometimes even guity of this)

[PondHollow]

As someone who plays one class well (Scholar) and another terribly (Warrior), I expect these changes to significantly improve my relative performance on warrior (I don't have the pugilist cross-class skills, and have GLA up to provoke), and scholars I see afraid of cleric stance should also move up from terrible to okay. Ideally there would be more accessible fairy management and DoT monitoring, but even if that doesn't happen, overall we should expect the Gini coefficient of DPS output to decrease on each job, which is valuable and true to their stated intentions.

[Shurrikhan]

They seem to be on the warpath against internal synergy, because apparently CD sync was too complex a concept for the average player and rewarding those with some degree of internal mechanical acumen was discouraging less insightful or otherwise disengaged players...

Thus the ceiling may well be reduced. But, that doesn't say anything about the floor.
For all I can tell, even if SE created a zero-synergy arsenal of damage abilities that one could roll their face around on or just key-pace back and forth over for optimal damage, many players would still neglect to even use them.

[thegreatonemal]

while the changes are nice its just a half hearted way of trying to teach rotation without actually putting the rotations in the game. at the very least the job gauges get the idea across of how the class is supposed to flow.

[Aquaslash]

The only way to close the skill gap is to teach people their rotations. Even then it'll still be huge. These changes will help though. VERY slick graphics to look at and easy to understand