Level Syncing is Becoming an Increasing Problem

[Sylvain]

snip

BLM fire IV should be learned lv 54 right after enochian.

[Ariel_Valmont]

You should have your basic GCD rotation unlocked by Sastasha, and you should have all of your abilities by level 50. That gives you 20 levels to practice them before reaching end-game, and will let us use all of our abilities in everything but leveling roulette.

Regularly unlocking abilities as you level up has never made leveling more fun or engaging to me. Most of the time it just leaves you with an incomplete and awkward toolkit until you reach a certain milestone.

I agree with this, to expand, after level 50, traits could be used to, change abilities into stronger versions, or something different all together. This would allow to give jobs a fresh feel and make them stronger without having to revamp everything or cull abilities.

I don’t know why they just didn’t design level sync to allow us to keep our learned abilities, But lower job strength to bring it in line with the content you were synced to.

[Acidblood]

Well, you're not waiting 52 levels to use Third Eye, because you start SAM at level 50.

Good point

I don’t know why they just didn’t design level sync to allow us to keep our learned abilities, But lower job strength to bring it in line with the content you were synced to.

I think the main problem with letting high-level characters keep their abilities is that jobs tend to get a LOT of damage boosts / hard hitting abilities at higher levels (i.e. even with equal stats a high-level character would hit a lot harder than a low-level character) ... which would then mean a lot more work / complexity to ‘level sync’ than simply lowering stat values (lest they make the lives of low-level characters, especially tanks, even more of a nightmare).

It also fails to address the issue of low-level play, especially for new players (i.e. less new players sticking it out until it 'gets better at high levels').

[Kabooa]

All actions remain usable. Actions that are not level appropriate are reduced in power.

[Acidblood]

All actions remain usable. Actions that are not level appropriate are reduced in power.

Reduced by how much though? I mean, reduce abilities too far and you may as well not use them (why go to the effort for such a small gain?), but not far enough and high-level characters will still be too powerful.

And then you have different types of abilities... reducing BLM Flare / Foul by only 50% would probably still leave them with insane AoE compared to what is normally available at low levels, but reduce BLM Fire IV by the same 50% and it becomes objectively worse than Fire I (i.e. it would be a 30 potency DPS loss and it doesn't refresh stacks)… and is DRG Doom Spike @ 140 AoE potency, which they don't normally get until level 40, too powerful at low levels when BLM has Fire II @ 80+AF AoE pontency and BRD has Quick Nock @ 110 AoE potency (plus a DoT) at level 18?

As I said, it would take a lot of work, and add a lot of complexity, to ‘balance’ level sync properly if high level characters 'simply' kept their abilities... it would be much better to put that effort into re-working the abilities jobs get a low-to-mid-levels, which would also benefit low-to-mid-level characters (for both new players and alt-jobs).

[tdb]

What I'd like to see is some kind of dynamic scaling based on how far down players in a group are synced (level-wise, NOT item-level-wise), while not removing our skills and traits.

• Are the DPS a higher level than the dungeon? Now all the enemies have more health and the tank passively generates more enmity to compensate for the increased damage output of the DPS.
• Is the tank a higher level than the dungeon? Now the enemies hit slightly harder and have slightly more health to compensate for the tank's increased defensive and offensive capabilities.
• Does the healer outlevel the dungeon? Enemies hit harder and the tank generates slightly more emnity to compensate for the increased healing going out.

This may run into problems if player levels are wildly different. In particular, anything that increases enemy damage while keeping player health the same reduces the margin of error in dealing with mechanics. Higher healing output or tank health doesn't help if the DPS gets one-shot by a mechanic that should have been survivable.

I'm not bothered by losing more powerful versions of skills or minor mechanics, but lacking distinctive skills or major mechanics is annoying. For example WHM's Cure II is just better Cure, and Cure III is basically a hybrid between Cure and Medica. But having no instant heals before Lv50 and having to rely solely on Lucid Dreaming for MP management until Lv52 sucks. The lily mechanic is weak enough to be basically superfluous.

[Ekimmak]

This may run into problems if player levels are wildly different. In particular, anything that increases enemy damage while keeping player health the same reduces the margin of error in dealing with mechanics. Higher healing output or tank health doesn't help if the DPS gets one-shot by a mechanic that should have been survivable.

I'm not bothered by losing more powerful versions of skills or minor mechanics, but lacking distinctive skills or major mechanics is annoying. For example WHM's Cure II is just better Cure, and Cure III is basically a hybrid between Cure and Medica. But having no instant heals before Lv50 and having to rely solely on Lucid Dreaming for MP management until Lv52 sucks. The lily mechanic is weak enough to be basically superfluous.

Cure II is also flat out more expensive than Cure, and the latter gives a free use of the former. So not the best example.

[Grimoire-M]

Honestly this just shows us how important it is to have a decent progression of abilities while levelling. BLM got fixes to its rotation in Stormblood that also helped its levelling period massively. SCH had its issues addressed by the role action system. There's no reason SE can't implement similar ideas on other jobs. Every Tank except WAR has both of their stances and gets their basic aggro abilities at similar levels before reaching level 50.

On Machinist you could easily make Gauss Barrel a flat damage bonus trait at 52, then upgrade it to unlock the Overheat mechanic when you unlock Cooldown at 62.

With AST swap Gravity around either Combust II or Synastry. Fixes their level 50 sync issues and changes very little of of their progression.

[tdb]

Cure II is also flat out more expensive than Cure, and the latter gives a free use of the former. So not the best example.

Yes, and that's why it's not simply replaced when you unlock the better version like the Stone spells are. Still, they're both single-target heals with a cast time and they get used in similar situations.

[Sylvain]

As a side note, it'd be nice if melee could learn to do positional outside of dungeons.

The time spent in dungeon / trial is very minimal when you level your first job and this is where you get most of your habit.

Melee not being able to do positional on most world mobs makes newer player (who are slightly casual in mindset) get a very bad habit of ignoring those. It is not uncommon to see melee entirely ignoring position until max level when they start being told/réalising they perform poorly.