Level 70 Job Feedback

[Jonnycbad]

So now that Stormblood is over 1 year old, I wanted to make a post to collect feedback on what the devs did right and what the devs could have done better for combat balance and job roles at 70. The devs collect data from the playerbase all over the web to help inform them on feedback for changes in the next expansion, but want this thread to be sort of a good go-to.

[Jonnycbad]

Dragoon:

Dragoon felt very powerful at 70 upon release. I enjoyed not having my bar degrade with every use of Geirskogul like at 60 as that was added stress. The extra abilities Mirage Dive for every job was fun as well. I like the direction that Dragoon is currently heading. I especially thank you for giving us an AoE combo that refreshes Blood of the Dragon duration, this was welcomed indeed.

My criticism is that it initially took too long to enter Life of the Dragon, and when your Blood of the Dragon gauge runs out you lose all progress towards Life of the Dragon. This is in stark contrast to other jobs that have resources for the gauge that do not diminish with time, for example Chakra, Ninki, Kenki, Aether flow, Ammo, etc. Most jobs have 2 resources they must upkeep, with 1 being a time-degrading resource and the other not.

Both of Dragoon's resources (Blood of the Dragon, and the 3 stacks of dragon eyes) are time dependent on the former. So if your blood of the Dragon timer runs out, you lose all the eyes.
This was remedied with the patch that reduced the number of eyes to enter Life of the Dragon from 4 to 3. However, this desynchronized some of our other abilities. For example, prior to this change, Blood for Blood was available right around the time you enter Life of the Dragon so that we could use 2 Nastrond under it very cleanly. It was very neat and direct but now we need to hold our Geirskoguls to manually align it withblood for Blood for Blood. It ends up not being too much trouble but some of the "design elegance" was lost due to this change.

My other concern is unnecessary button bloat. Why do we have Impulse Drive and True Thrust still? And Vorpal Thrust? You can reduce the number of unnecessary weapon skills for Dragoon (currently both combos together at 70 10 individual buttons), this could be reduced to 7 by making one weapon skill open both combos and branch into Vorpal Thrust and Disembowel, similar to how Spinning Edge, Hard Slash, Heavy Swing, Fast Blade, and Jinpu all open into multiple combos. That said, you can remove Heavy Thrust and put its 10% damage bonus on Vorpal Thrust, making it similar to Storm's Eye and streamlining Dragoon's combos while making room for new abilities and remove the redundancy of having 2 different weapon skills that open up 2 different combos.


Red Mage:

RDM is very fun and I think captures the classic elements of Red Mage, being able to cure, cast, raise, and use a sword effectively. It's a very useful job for a lot of content but has some glaring issues.

I think it takes a bit too long to use their spellblade combo. I understand it's meant to be their big burst damage and they're meant to be more caster than melee (and how vulnerable a caster can be being in melee range frequently), that said, it still takes quite a while to get to 80/80 mana due to the randomness of procs. RDM AoE also feels very weak when low on mana and when Contre Sixte is unavailable. Enhanced Moulinet requires a lot of mana and doesn't combo into anything stronger. Perhaps we will see an AoE combo off of Moulinet, ending in Vercomet or something in the future...?
The other issue is RDM damage is overall lacking but that is an issue with potency not necessarily a design flaw, so perhaps that can be ameliorated soon. The other glaring issue is reliance on MP with no way to restore it without Cross Role skills like Lucid Dreaming. The other 2 casters, have job specific ways to recover MP like Umbral Ice, Energy Drain, and Aetherflow. Perhaps RDM needs a way to restore its MP? Maybe Verflare/Verholy can recover 10% of RDM's MP or add an HP/MP drain to Corp-a-Corp?


Paladin:

PLD felt very nice at 70. Our skillet felt very rounded and we were finally given an equivalent to Fell Cleave in the form of Holy Spirit a d Requiescat. This makes PLD feel much more like a Holy Knight and harkens back to Beatrix/General Leo, and Agrias! I'm glad to see PLD having more options for damage, both single target and AoE (with Full Eclipse).

My hope for the future is that PLD eventually gets some form of gap-closer, like a shield tackle of sorts. It could cost some gauge to use, making it similar to Warrior's Onslaught, and preserving Dark Knight's specialty of a free OGCD Plunge. I think also an AoE version of a Holy Spirit would be cool too, albeit weaker of course. As PLD has no way to recover TP, having an MP option for AoE damage would be cool. Maybe Stockbreak or Climhazzard from FF9?

Scholar:

SCH had a bunch of changes from HW, mostly to weaken it. We lost 1 DoT spell as well as Shadow Flare became an oGCD with a long recast. Excognition is very useful and cool, but I feel the Aetherpact/Fey Union is not that useful or good. It's a decent sustained heal over its duration but the fairy's Embrace has been weakened so many times that it feels like Fey Union just temporarily "unnerfs" the fairy for a short time rather than it being some cool ability that saves the day.

Miasma II was very welcomed as it gave Scholar a much needed boost to AoE damage, give how much Shadow Flare was weakened and the fact that Bane was weakened due to the loss of Bio 1. That said I would much enjoy if SCH got a large AoE damage spell, like an AoE Broil. Hey, maybe we will get Meltdown? Broil.... Meltdown... Hell, Scholar had it in FFXI as their ultimate spell (Kaustra in English, Merton/Meltdown in JP)

[Neela]

whm: revamp lilies completely... their 70 skill mechanic is embarrassing q.q

[Remedi]

@jonnycbad I agree with most of your points and I'll say this.
If they end up removing resistances from the game I can see them removing impulse drive and disembowal altogether (dragon kick and maim too probably)

[Brightamethyst]

Dear game devs everywhere,
Maintenance buffs suck. Seriously, just stop.
-Jenna


Seriously though, I think the biggest issue with DPS jobs as a whole right now is the heavy use of maintenance buffs. They're not fun or interesting. All they do is make everything more annoying. Boss goes untargetable for 10 seconds? Sucks to be you, start your rotation over, loser. I want buffs that make me feel powerful when they're active (Summon Bahamut), rather than feeling like crap when they're not (BotD.)

[wereotter]

Monk:

Changing the job from consistent high damage to a job centered around RNG is kind of not great. Also comparing the implementation of the RNG aspects of this job to other jobs also relying on RNG (Bard) just feels bad. Bard get a 100% proc rate on their critical DOT ticks, and for all of their songs even one crit is added DPS. Monk has it's abilities buried under layers of RNG with only a 50% chance to open a chakra when you have a crit weaponskill which means you have to have the RNG of getting a crit and then the RNG of did you get a proc, and after that you still need 5 procs to use them.

Tacklemastery is still a joke. Wind Tackle is marginally useful, but earth tackle still has no use in any content.

Riddle of Earth still isn't working well for monk as the skill is at odds with the toolkits of other jobs. If you get hit by an ability, but take 0 damage thanks to a SCH/AST shield you don't refresh your greased lightning, not to mention that this skill encourages you to take what might have otherwise been avoidable damage just to try to keep up your greased lightning.

Beyond that, the job is still putting out good damage, and isn't the joke job getting left out of content like it was in Heavensward, so at least things are improving. Just feels like they didn't put as much thought into the job as some of the others when designing changes for the expansion.

Ninja:

The addition of ninki is a fun mechanic that doesn't take much thought to execute as it just builds on its own as you auto attack. Only suggestion would be to have skill speed increase auto attack rate instead of auto attack damage to make the mechanic more interesting, and give the player more control on how much of the resource they want to generate.

[Oxmodial]

Dear game devs everywhere,
Maintenance buffs suck. Seriously, just stop.
-Jenna


Seriously though, I think the biggest issue with DPS jobs as a whole right now is the heavy use of maintenance buffs. They're not fun or interesting. All they do is make everything more annoying. Boss goes untargetable for 10 seconds? Sucks to be you, start your rotation over, loser. I want buffs that make me feel powerful when they're active (Summon Bahamut), rather than feeling like crap when they're not (BotD.)

These types of buffs add strategy and depth to the game. Removing them is one step towards the complete watering down of the combat system as a whole and as such I cannot possibly agree with their removal.

[Brightamethyst]

These types of buffs add strategy and depth to the game. Removing them is one step towards the complete watering down of the combat system as a whole

I disagree on depth and strategy. With the exception of maybe Enochian, what else is skill based? Heavy Thrust, Hot Shot? One button you press every 30-60 seconds. Blood of the Dragon, Greased Lightning? Stays up pretty much by itself unless a) you screw up huge/die, or b) can't attack something for 5 seconds because of mechanics (much more common in my experience.) There's no strategy to be had, and most of the time no fun either. Just frustration because maintenance buffs and fight mechanics are almost always at odds with each other.

Honest question here. Do you actually find the maintenance buff play style fun? Do you legitimately enjoy it? I ask because I know no one (except some BLMs) who actually likes it. They put up with it because they don't have a choice, but they don't like it.

[Jonnycbad]

Heavy Thrust and Hot Shot should be removed. Instead, put the damage bonus on Vorpal Thrust and Slug Shot respectively. This is the case for Storm's Eye, Snap Punch, and Jinpu. Vorpal Thrust does nothing, it's just damage that combos into Full Thrust. That change alone removes one useless ability.