My suggestion for how to fix the current "Synergy Stacking" meta.

[Nominous]

I've been mulling the idea over for a while, and haven't been able to find any downsides.

Check it out. A serious idea to fix it all.

- Levels 60 and 70 unlock additional Cross Role ability slots, bringing the total number of slots to 7.

- Remove Battle Litany, Trick Attack, Brotherhood, Dragon Sight, Devotion, Embolden, Hyper Charge, Foe's Requiem from their respective Jobs. Remove Piercing/Slashing/Blunt resistance down.

- Put all of the above Abilities into Cross Role actions for their respective roles. Re-tool abilities and names (like they did with the current cross roles coming from 2.x/3.x).

- Melee are given Battle Litany, Trick Attack, Brotherhood, Dragon Sight, Piercing Debuff. Can only take (1) of the above.
- Ranged are given Hypercharge, Foe's Requiem, Slashing Debuff. Can only take (1) of the above.
- Magical Ranged are given Embolden and Devotion, Blunt Debuff. Can only take (1) of the above.

That's my solution.

And just for fun- I had even more interesting ideas. Each Job's "Affinity" for a Cross Role gives them extra effects (incentive to take on specific Jobs) when used.

- DRG has "Affinity" to Battle Litany and Dragon Sight. DRG is given a personal Direct Hit percentage increase when using Battle Litany, and boosts personal damage by 5% more when using Dragon Sight.
- NIN has "Affinity" to Trick Attack. When used, "Haste" effect applied to self. Haste speeds up ONLY the rate of auto-attacks for the duration of Trick Attack.
- MNK has "Affinity" to Brotherhood. When used, Meditative Brotherhood granted (current implementation).

Etc etc. The idea is to keep the skill feeling unique for those who gave it to Cross Role, but also, to have flexibility within party-makeup. The party loses nothing for bringing any specific Job, but the specific Job gains something for bringing specific Cross Role.

[LeoLupinos]

I fear everyone will just take the better one.

[Nominous]

I fear everyone will just take the better one.

The idea would be to swap for whatever party composition makes the most sense as far as ROLE (melee/phys-range/mag-range), not JOB. If you wanted slashing for the tanks, and melee, you have to take a ranged (MCH or BRD would give you the same benefits). If you wanted piercing for the phys-ranged, you'd need a melee (SAM, MNK, NIN, or DRG would all benefit you the same). Etc etc.

The one thing that's kind of terrible regardless, is resistance debuffs, which flat out shouldn't exist anymore as they're too restrictive, even in the best of scenarios. But they seem to really believe it's some miracle of gameplay to tie together Jobs like that.

[thegreatonemal]

Making a new meta changes nothing people will get on that train leaving any classes that fall out of that meta behind. There's no fixing a meta because in this game there's nothing wrong with it. Your issues with it are community based the game is pretty well balanced

[LeoLupinos]

Making a new meta changes nothing people will get on that train leaving any classes that fall out of that meta behind. There's no fixing a meta because in this game there's nothing wrong with it. Your issues with it are community based the game is pretty well balanced

Totaly right.

I don't know why so much players bother about 10% over 10s over a 10min battle, it's so little.

[HyoMinPark]

Totaly right.

I don't know why so much players bother about 10% over 10s over a 10min battle, it's so little.

If you looked at raid DPS calculators, you would see why. In a good group, TA can give ~900 rDPS to 7 other people. This game is all about damage, since healing is overpowered, and enmity is a joke for any tank that knows a proper opener. The only thing left to focus on for tanks and healers is damage, just like the 4 DPS in the party. So the meta stacks rBuffs to give the party more damage.

That being said, Disembowel is the real culprit in terms of the current meta at hand—where as TA can give anywhere from 90 DPS to 150 DPS to a single person, Disembowel gives ~300 DPS: it’s +5% damage for the entirety of the fight, which is why BRDs and MCHs that care about their damage will always want a DRG with them, and any group running BOTH BRD/MCH would be out of their mind to not bring a DRG for that +~600 free rDPS.


As for the OP’s suggestion, I disagree with it, mainly on the account that resistance down debuffs should not even be included in these new “role actions”. They are all redundant at this point, with only BRD/MCH being unable to apply their own, and should be removed entirely in 5.0 — with minor adjustments to DRG’s damage, since they will be severely hurting at that point, and maybe a slight tweak to at least MCH, who is already getting replaced in speed kill comps by BLM or SMN, and who severely lacks in both utility and damage. BRD may have low damage, but it is the master of utility (and always has been since 2.0) so it can at least compensate in some shape or form.

It is also worth considering that this would just cause more of the same issues that the current role actions have for some jobs, in which there are no “options” in terms of what to bring, only the illusion of it. For example: physical ranged have 2 mandatory skills (Refresh and Tactician), 1 semi-mandatory skill (Palisade—for physical damage), and 2 skills that they usually prefer to have at all times (Second Wind and Invigorate); the remaining skills are either useless in combat (SWIFTSONG—never not going to call Peloton that), highly situational (Head Graze), or completely useless (Leg Graze, Arm Graze, Foot Graze—I put Arm Graze in here not because the stun is worthless per say, but that it’s never been used since 4.0 launched, and other jobs already have stun options—only physical ranged have a silence outside of NIN’s Jugulate, and tanks can bring something more useful to them instead of Interject). Adding something like Foe Requiem to their arsenal would just further remove the illusion of optional role action skills, and put another mandatory skill in there.

Give damage type debuffs to a couple other classes.

Literally the only two that don’t have them are BRD/MCH—all other DPS (and WAR) can apply the resistance downs the buff their own damage. And since Yoshida has already said that he is not okay with BRD/MCH being OP and having their own piercing (yet perfectly fine with them being OP with a DRG in the party), they aren’t getting their respective damage downs. And if they did, then the debuffs are just redundant since they will never not be on a boss. Might as well remove them from the game from that point.

Sure you can argue to give piercing to RDM, but I would be more for just removing them entirely. They were something that should have gone with 4.0’s release, rather than have 1 nerfed by 5%—which didn’t destroy the physical meta at all until BLM and SMN began to pull enough damage to replace MCH (BRD didn’t go anywhere).

What if heat makes so MCH weaponskills are fire non piercing attacks?

That still doesn’t answer the piercing problem with regards to BRD, or with MCH’s other active time this is not spent Overheating. I stand by what I keep telling you in other threads—remove the resistence downs. They offer no synergy other than 1 comp, which people have been complaining about for almost 2 years. Get rid of them.

[Remedi]

That still doesn’t answer the piercing problem with regards to BRD, or with MCH’s other active time this is not spent Overheating. I stand by what I keep telling you in other threads—remove the resistence downs. They offer no synergy other than 1 comp, which people have been complaining about for almost 2 years. Get rid of them.

I keep telling that it will simply shift the blame to something else, look let's just not start again, we don't agree with this

[Nominous]

Making a new meta changes nothing people will get on that train leaving any classes that fall out of that meta behind. There's no fixing a meta because in this game there's nothing wrong with it. Your issues with it are community based the game is pretty well balanced

If there's nothing wrong with it, there'd be no threads about it. As it stands, there are quite a few, on the NA/EU AND the JP forums. Clearly people care, you don't have to look far to see that. And it's relevant as ever in the game, when certain Jobs carry a stigma with them. Not in all content, I'll give you that. But it's enough to where it's worth talking about. Never grow complacent with things being "Average" or mediocre. Always strive for better. Or at least, that's what SE SHOULD be doing.

[wereotter]

Poor monk.... will no one give us blunt debuff??

One of the suggestions that would be a bit better than redistributing the buffs would be to change how some of them work entirely. As well as your suggestions introduce new problems. Just like DRG is pretty much mandatory right now because of the piercing debuff they bring, BRD under your suggestions will have an always include position in a group given they could have the slashing debuff no one else gets in addition to the other plethora of utility buffs they have. Additionally if the damage debuffs are cross role skills, I would expect, especially in roulettes and 24-man content, no one will take these skills.

So here's another way to handle that:
remove blunt resist down, slashing resist down, and piercing resist down from the game entirely. Replace the skills on all jobs that have them with magic resist down and physical resist down. My suggestion is to distribute those skills between samurai, monk, dragoon, and ninja with magic resist down going onto ninja and monk and physical resist down on dragoon and samurai.

It would create a situation of one of two melee jobs for each slot, but it does change things from the pretty much mandatory DRG/NIN load out, but still leaves raid groups alone that are currently running that combo.

[Nominous]

It would create a situation of one of two melee jobs for each slot, but it does change things from the pretty much mandatory DRG/NIN load out, but still leaves raid groups alone that are currently running that combo.

Yeah, I've said it every time I've brought this up (some of those times in this thread): Resistance debuffs are incredibly restrictive and just shouldn't exist. If they HAVE to exist, like the developers (or at least YoshiP) seem to believe, they NEED to be spread out in a way where there's no lopsided representation. So I'd agree your idea (one that's been shared a lot) is good, but it needs removed.