Interview with xenosys-vex

[Exiled_Tonberry]

This whole idea about Utility vs DPS is a red herring anyway. When in the history of this game did the meta ever take the highest utility tank with lower DPS than the less utility tank? Never that's when.

THIS.
It's ALWAYS DPS>utilty.

If PLD's DPS was to suddenly drop about 10% below both tanks, but keep their utility, they'd be in the trash for another expansion. The only time utility actually matters is if it boosts your damage. Otherwise you'll make do with whatever little utility the job with more DPS happens to offer.

Anyone that tells you they'd bring a PLD that did 200+ less than WAR and DRK in favor of their utilty are lying through their teeth. This game doesn't, and will never need such a massive amount of defensive mitigation.

[whiskeybravo]

Here however, he conveniently says that DRK should have more DPS than PLD ONLY. He mysteriously neglects to mention WAR. So, essentially he is saying DRK and PLD should be balanced with eachother, but WAR should bring more DPS than both, while also having more utility than DRK. Does this sound familiar to anyone else? I'm getting severe deja vu here. Oh, right, this is what we had in Heavensward. Isn't that interesting.

Selective quotes are selective.

So Paladin has a lot more utility than Warrior, yet they still do just as much damage as a Warrior. Paladin’s DPS potential is actually a little bit less than Warrior, but if you fuck up even one time on Warrior, then a Paladin will out DPS you, at least in my experience, because Paladins do a lot of damage.

Of the three tanks, I think Paladin should do the least damage, because they have the best utility. Paladin is really fun, and I don’t think it needs a nerf. It’s in a perfect spot right now. I just think that Dark Knight and Warrior should do more damage than Paladin. I know that Warrior can do more, but that’s only if you have a perfect run. A Paladin should not rival a Warrior in damage, not when they have all that utility, as well.

I think that Warrior and Dark Knight both need some potency buffs, especially Dark Knight.

He doesn't outright say it, but if we are going to imply anything it should be that since he thinks drk only needs potency buffs and that's it, that he'd be OK with it doing more dps than war because it has less utility.

Essentially the interview can be boiled down to "PLD has good DPS now and brings good utility, buff Fell Cleave ... oh and DRK sucks ... WAR needs moar deeps!".

Again, not really. He's suggesting that there be less emphasis on Fell Cleave damage:

A way to adjust Warrior damage without buffing Fell Cleave would be to actually lower the potency of Fell Cleave and buff the three core combos, instead. That would distribute the damage output more evenly across the entire rotation, and Warrior DPS would no longer be so dependant on Fell Cleave crit RNG, because that one move would no longer be responsible for such a huge portion of your total damage.

The only real inconsistency is that prior to this statement he also says he thinks fell cleave should do more damage, which is kind of opposite of his more detailed suggestion here. While it could be interpreted as lop-sided logic, I'd lean more toward fell cleave buff comment being more of a reactionary/headline grabbing type statement which he's known for, while the more detailed suggestion is something that actually required a fair amount of thought or discussion.

- High burst lets you push phases and skip mechanics, which not only makes fights easier from a mechanical standpoint, but has a tendency to cascade into increased party damage, as your healers no longer have to heal the mechanic you skipped, DPS don't need to accrue downtime to dodge the mechanic, etc.

I'd also like to just add, phase pushes aren't always a good thing. T7 and T7 savage say "Hi"

[TouchandFeel]

Again, not really. He's suggesting that there be less emphasis on Fell Cleave damage:

The only real inconsistency is that prior to this statement he also says he thinks fell cleave should do more damage, which is kind of opposite of his more detailed suggestion here. While it could be interpreted as lop-sided logic, I'd lean more toward fell cleave buff comment more of a reactionary/headline grabbing type statement which he's known for, while the more detailed suggestion is something that actually required a fair amount of thought or discussion.

This is what he said, copy/pasted straight from the article. It is a direct argument for a buff to Fell Cleave damage with the logic that because other classes got big hard hitting abilities, Fell Cleave is no longer "Fell Cleavey" enough and other abilities are stealing it's thunder.

I think that Fell Cleave should do more damage. Five hundred potency is not a lot anymore. It’s just not. People call me a fucking retard, and say “why would you buff Fell Cleave, it’s so powerful” and it’s kind of not. Not when fucking AST has a five hundred potency ability. Every job in the game has a five hundred potency ability, it seems. It was crazy in Heavensward, but not anymore. Paladins have a ranged ability that hits almost as hard as a Fell Cleave now. That means that they can move away to do mechanics and still get their Fell Cleaves in. I wish I could do a fucking Inner Release window from halfway across the room!

Yes, he then argues that WAR is too burst dependent and says that an alternative to Fell Cleave buffs is to boost combo ability potencies.

He provided contradicting arguments that only agree on one thing, "WAR needs moar deeps!", which lines up with my satirical summation of the interview.

Really I feel his position is actually based less on objective concerns over balance and more about wanting to not feel diminished in WAR feeling like, as Xeno himself likes to put it, the "big dick" job.

[Aana]

This is what he said, copy/pasted straight from the article. It is a direct argument for a buff to Fell Cleave damage with the logic that because other classes got big hard hitting abilities, Fell Cleave is no longer "Fell Cleavey" enough and other abilities are stealing it's thunder.



Yes, he then argues that WAR is too burst dependent and says that an alternative to Fell Cleave buffs is to boost combo ability potencies.

He provided contradicting arguments that only agree on one thing, "WAR needs moar deeps!", which lines up with my satirical summation of the interview.

Really I feel his position is actually based less on objective concerns over balance and more about wanting to not feel challenged in WAR feeling like, as Xeno himself likes to put it, the "big dick" job.

What I got out of the interview was a few things regarding the "fell cleavyness" of war.

Its 2 separate ideas.

Idea1: FC used to have more individual 'impact' because 500 pot was unheard of in HW. To maintain that 'fell cleavyness' impact it would need to be increased because there has been potency creep across the board and FC did not participate in that. (Newer skills have high pot, like ast, old skills have power creeped significantly across all classes, etc)
Idea 2: War is very reliant on its burst window every 2 min and should be rebalanced to be less 'all in'. This is where he talks about increasing rotation potency and lowering FC.

A quick glance seems to say he wants to buff FC, buff the rotation, separate IR, buff buff buff moar damage.

But these are not mutually exclusive ideas. I think the core of his thing is that instead of giving FC power creep to keep up, we got IR and infuriate recast buffs. This lets us do MORE FCs, but each FC is less impactful and moved our damage to small windows. He wants to reverse that trend make FC more powerful to bring back the OOMPH it used to have and TRADE that extra power by lessening the burst windows. He even suggests just that. Make IR buff the next 3 FCs and put it on 1 min timer. Instead of 6 weak FCs every 2 min, do 3 stronger ones more regularly. This brings back the FC 'impact' while also changing the jobs focus on itty bitty bust windows. In addition to weakening the burst windows bump up the basic rotation to power creep it like most other jobs.

I don't see this as a BUFF WAR MOAR DAMAGE RAWR! Idea. I see it more as a reimagining of how war could PLAY.

I don't particularly agree with his view in all respects. Its essentially a rework of how war plays and that's not really a balance fix. Just a dream of playing his fantasy of war. You even see it in his discussion of why he played war. He always plays big 2handed weapon jobs. He wants that fantasy of cracking a mountain in half with 1 blow. Not being a ninja striking with 100 weak attacks. Instead of lots of 'little' FCs, he wants big, fewer, manly ones. Just his idea of fun.

[Crater]

Unfortunately, this entire line of argumentation can be dismissed for this particular raid tier. There aren't any "phases" to push, fights are 100% scripted. The only mechanics you're skipping are due to a faster clear, and in this regard burst damage is equally valuable as sustained. The only real phase push in current content is in Shinryu, which is pug content at this point. The adds in v3s barely live long enough for more than 1-2 fell cleaves, and the other adds are just used for pad nowadays.

Shinryu has phase skips, Twintania has multiple phase/mechanic skips, you can cut some stuff out of the end of Nael if you push hard enough, etc. The four Deltascape fights may not have actual skips, but the current primal and the new big raid both do. And Deltascape is an anomaly in that regard - phase pushes have been a part of at least two fights in every single previous raid tier, and the vast majority of the Extreme primals.

Regardless, though, phase pushes are just the easiest example to point to of how burst inherently has more utility than sustained damage. There are add burns, as you mention (which are also rare in current content but fairly common historically), and every single fight with enforced downtime is also tilted in favour of burst-oriented classes. Any time when any fight has moments where damage is more important or less important than the average is a fight where burst is more valuable than sustained, and fights that don't have any moments like that are so rare that you can consider them an anomaly, rather than a balance consideration.

To be clear, though: When I say that burst is inherently more valuable, that isn't necessarily to say that it's universally more valuable - only that it is often better, and is never worse (even in your later example of T7/T7S, holding on to your damage to time a phase skip means that you're that much more likely to have a full burst available after you do make the skip).

A comparison: Vengeance is a better 30% mitigation cooldown than Shadow Wall, I think we could all agree. However, if we really want to, we can design a fight where there's only one attack that warrants a 30% mitigation tool, where that attack is used every 180s, and there's no benefit to be gained in healer damage/GCDs by using Vengeance elsewhere. In that instance, Vengeance is no better than Shadow Wall - but it doesn't change the fact that Vengeance is a better cooldown than Shadow Wall, in general.

Furthermore, higher burst can not be inherently easier to optimize than sustained. I really can't believe that would be argued. It's much more difficult to line up small burst windows into even smaller raid utility windows. I don't optimize to that high of a level, but Xeno said he uses 9 different rotations based on party comp? How many does his paladin have?

Xeno "uses 9 different rotations" in the sense that Dark Knight "has 6 different GCD combos" if you start counting Power Slash, DA Power Slash, Souleater, DA-Syphon Souleater, DA-Souleater Souleater, and DA-Syphon DA-Souleater Souleater as separate combos. It's absolute nonsense, exaggerating every single trivially distinct permutation of "Try to get 3-4 Fell Cleaves into every Trick Attack" into some entirely new, esoteric technique that you have to learn. It's his whole schtick at this point: Just spewing a bunch of vague garbage that makes it sound like his favourite class requires a PhD to optimize while ignoring that every single class in the game has a comparable amount of nuance at the high end.

Optimizing burst-oriented classes is always easier than the classes that are "always-on". It's the same difference as being able to do your class's opener, versus being a top-tier, orange-parse FFLogs superstar. How many people can do a perfect opener? Just about everybody who actually wants to give it a try. How many people can actually play their class perfectly from start to finish? Not many.

The difference, when you're not splitting hairs about being at the very top of the skill curve and accept that you're going to lose some potency, is that on a burst class, you have to pay close attention to what you're doing for the duration of your burst, and then you get to basically relax and 1-2-3 until your next burst, because you don't have much to do in between and even if you lose uptime or play inefficiently you're losing a comparatively small amount of your damage. On a 'sustain' class, every single second of lost uptime hurts equally, and there's no point at which you can just 'relax' and chill for a couple GCDs without losing basically just as much damage as you would if you took a snooze during a burst window.

[Kabooa]

Anyone that tells you they'd bring a PLD that did 200+ less than WAR and DRK in favor of their utilty are lying through their teeth. This game doesn't, and will never need such a massive amount of defensive mitigation.

It'd be a different tale if party sizes were larger, but this goes across the board with most defensive skills. Encounters cannot require all or even most of them because there's a good chance a certain job will not be present in the current 8 man set up.

I can see them moving all forms of raid defenses into the role system at some point.

[Claire_Pendragon]

For clarification, DPS >Utility, is because Utility only helps survival in content where its designed so ppl survive w/o that utility.

Utility needs to be at the point of either required for survival, or to the point of being so helpful on healing, it actually allows more DPS, and i dont mean 1 more GCD from the healer.

an example, imagine if 1 tank had an ability that lasted the whole fight, and lowered all dmg everyone took by 50%.
but that tank did 20% less dps.

now THAT utility would easily out weight DPS, because it technically is a DPS increase. (roughly a 50% DPS increase from the healers, though a bit over simplified.))

currently all of our mitigation is short lasting, and weak.
we'll never see defensive utility being better than direct DPS.

[Argyle_Darkheart]

When in the history of this game did the meta ever take the highest utility tank with lower DPS than the less utility tank? Never that's when. Pld had by far the best utility in HW.

Did it though? In an expansion where WAR had Storm's Path and DRK had Delirium and Reprisal?

[Exiled_Tonberry]

It'd be a different tale if party sizes were larger, but this goes across the board with most defensive skills. Encounters cannot require all or even most of them because there's a good chance a certain job will not be present in the current 8 man set up.

This. Or if, as Claire_Pendragon already said, the defensive utility is so overwhelmingly powerful and helpful to the group, that it actually raises DPS by allowing healers to DPS near full-time and for actual DPS to perhaps ignore a mechanic or two.

Passage of Arms and Divine Veil isn't going to beat better DPS when it's completely unnecessary mitigation that doesn't change how much healers need to heal.

[DaulBan]

Passage of Arms and Divine Veil isn't going to beat better DPS when it's completely unnecessary mitigation that doesn't change how much healers need to heal.

It does mean that eventually, assuming difficulty creep sets in with Savage, PLD might become more appealing if we run into harsh survival checks. Personally I doubt that we'd run into something quite that difficult, but if they ever introduce a survival check in normal savage like there is with Morn Afah (sp?) in Bahamut Ultimate then Paladin might be a must. Though at that point there's probably something wrong with the fight in the first place... In which case the point may very well be moot.