Interview with xenosys-vex

[Aana]

Apples to oranges is irrelevant and I'm tired of reading it. If it affects the overall versatility of a class then it has to be balanced and you won't find a balance till you try. The current tank balance is off, at least in DRKs case. Could easier balance be achieved if every class had the same skills? Obviously so... then we may as well all be playing pld with different skills.

Redmage can raise and upkeep a tank, how do you balance that into a DPS category without lowering their dps in the first place. How do you balance support skills vs dps? Is that bananas vs apples or something? They are different but they still require balancing, that's all there is to it. You can't have every class do 3k and one class bring an arguably useless utility that gets used for personal utility anyway, one class bring a useful utility, and another class have 4 utility skills.

And look at where blm and rdm are. Or sam and nin. They are all unbalanced according to the community. WHy didn't people use the superior mitigation of Pld/War/Mnk/(Nin-Drg) compared to Drk/War/Nin/Drg for all of heavesward?

You say its possible and we should try. SE has been trying and failing since 2.0. Other games have been failing for years. The content alone will determine whats important to have and whats not. The players will, without fail, optimize their play and compositions to fit that mold. The way 14 is designed its all about damage with little concern for anything else. Unless SE starts redesigning their content then raid DPS is the single largest factor in shaping player perceptions about jobs and their viability. So work on the big rock issues and don't fill your jar with sand. Mitigation has a value, but its is both smaller than DPS and more ephemeral. If jobs do similar damage they will be 98% of the way to balance and thus all playable, functional, viable. Drk is behind on damage. Fixing that is both easy and the most effective path to balance. Its also a PVE game. Balance will never be the top most concern of devs. The pendulum will swing around every few patches, but if DPS is comparable then it will be small swings. We aren't going to get starcraft level balance because its a PVE game. But we can just get close enough for govt work and the straightest, foolproof way to do that in the games overall design is DPS.