Job Specific Traits?

[Vandril]

It's also advantageous in frontlines due to allowing you to take routes that would cripple or kill the other classes.

Was advantageous in Frontlines. Since they overhauled the PvP system in Stormblood, that trait no longer exists in Frontlines.

...I miss it.

[BillyKaplan]

I get what you all are saying, but it just eats at me. For all of that, why even allow us to change classes/jobs on the go? Or for that matter allow us to level multiple classes/jobs on one character?

Because it makes no sense I'll have to create another character if it turns out the class I picked for myself originally turned out to not be fun or was changed later on like bow mage in HW.

[Xlantaa]

This has been designed to have all the jobs the same value in a party. If you have a Dragoon which "Dragonkiller" trait that makes them more effective against dragons, then on Coil of Bahamut, which is full of dragons, everyone will get Dragoon, making other classes excluded from than content. This is a multiplayer game, you cannot make one job better than other for certain task. You're playing with other people with their own jobs. On single player game can work, on online games not, since balance is needed. It is the same for another discussion. The elemental damage. The reason we don't have elemental weakness or resistances is beucase that can cause jobs to be useless or very powerful agains a specific enemy. Imagine a boss with resistante 100% to all elements. You cannot get a Black mage or Red Mages, most of their spells will deal 0 damage, making useless that job. Of coruse we can fix it give more skills with no elements, but we enter again in the HW problems and the vast amount of skills. Current traits are treated around a job specific mechanics, which not affect the party composition or enemy you're fighting. From a MMO point of view, the traits you describe is a very bad design idea.

[Joe777]

This has been designed to have all the jobs the same value in a party. If you have a Dragoon which "Dragonkiller" trait that makes them more effective against dragons, then on Coil of Bahamut, which is full of dragons, everyone will get Dragoon, making other classes excluded from than content.

That isn't entirely true. People will still want jobs that add utility, like Ninja. What it would mean though is they will want to have a Dragoon around to support and it'd be the main DPS of that raid. But the point does still stand that giving jobs an edge over certain things isn't gonna happen, since as was stated already it's similar to elements.

[Jandor]

Dragoon getting a fancy jump animation would be nice flavour.

[ErryK]

Feels like a whole lot of something just for a whole lot of nothing.

[RitsukoSonoda]

FFXI had elemental resistances and even general damage type resistances as well as an MMO which would effect party compositions depending on end game activity and even preferred exp locations for lvling up or earning merits. However it still didn't completely exclude jobs from content. However jobs in FFXI had more options. BLM, RDM, and SMN had every element available for magic. Physical damage jobs had weapon options that could change the type of physical damage they dealt between slashing, piercing, and blunt. Something we don't have in FFXIV. That said job specific traits and implementation of damage resistances would atleast shake up the end game "meta" making the ideal party comp change depending on content. As it is now jobs are chosen over others anyway for other reasons and that's always going to happen. The difference we have now is those reasons are the same for all content of that type.

[Jijifli]

Snip

Yes, jobs will be picked over others for one reason or another. But that reason shouldn't be because the boss is a specific enemy type.

Imagine you're in a raid team, focused on 100% effectiveness. The team goes the meta, and enjoy their jobs too. Your melee dps end up being Samurai and Ninja. You beat rooms 1 and 3, but come room 3, the boss is a Dragon. Statistics say double DRG is better than any melee combo in the fight because of the DRG trait to kill dragons quicker.

Are you going to force the SAM and NIN to change to DRG, just for the fight? Are you going to replace them completely if they say no?

That's what these traits can do. The current special traits given to ninja barely effect a fight at all. But if the trait isn't even noticeable, how is it anything special like anyone wants?

[RitsukoSonoda]

*snip*

Killer traits in FFXI actually didn't do anything noticeable for damage or resistance against specific monsters. They really only came into play soloing unless you were a PLD which got undead killer. What killer traits did is create an x% chance of intimidating that type of enemy making it lose an action if it attacked the person with the trait. So really you're blowing it out of proportion. Damage output was more a matter of damage types/elements vs the resistances of the enemies you were fighting. Which doesn't exist in this game for the most part aside from certain enemies using buffs.

[Jijifli]

Snip

I wouldn't say I'm throwing it out of proportion. If it's just cosmetic I don't have an argument, but if they did put in something where, say, DRG did more damage to Dragon/Wyrm enemies, you'd get two situations. Either it's not noticeable, in which case what was the point wasting design time on it instead of something more useful, or it is noticeable, and it excludes some people for not playing that job even more.

I don't know. Maybe I get scared because people want elemental immune enemies.