A QoL/Balance Shortlist for DPS (Tanks/Healers only as additional context)

**Shurrikhan** · 11-15-2018 11:10 PM

A shortlist, not a short list. Though admittedly it was originally much shorter.

QoL/Balance Changes – Shortlist

* Edits made in response to replies noted in the post below have been underlined.

General Changes:

Mechanical and Miscellaneous Changes

Refreshing or replacing a given buff or debuff with the same will now cause the square root of the lesser duration to be added to the greater's. For instance, if one is forced to clip a Demolish DoT (normally 18 seconds duration) at 1 second remaining, the next will last 19 seconds, or if at 4 seconds remaining - 21 seconds, but if one places a Aspected Benefic atop one that was already newly applied and then extended (for a total of, say, 18+15+5->38 seconds), the new (lesser) duration will be absorbed, to a total of 42 seconds.
Damage suppressed due to debuffs on an attacking target now count towards Limit Break as would mitigation. Thus, Dismantle, Feint, Addle, and Reprisal no longer cost LB generation.
TP and MP now tick for 20% less but per player GCD, thereby benefiting from Attack Speed (and the consolidated Speed stat; see below). Buffs to TP or MP regeneration as from Refresh, Goad, and Tactician now simply increase the tick amount, but follow the same tick, therefore likewise scaling with Attack Speed (and the Speed stat).
Enemy units will no longer intercept terrain selection when placing ground-based AoEs; you may now click through the enemies to select the ground beneath them.
Ground AoEs may now be queued. Upon end of animation lock or GCD refresh, abilities will cast and spells will cause your character will be checked for movement and, if stationary, cast the spell as soon as able.
Effects generated upon successful hits now all generate at the same capacity when attacking an invincible target.
Casts now snapshot buffs present at start of cast. This grants slightly more power to the revised Embolden and to Balance, but otherwise acts primarily as a QoL change in that one can finish casting Verstone, Verfire, Impact, Enhanced Shatter, Fire IV, and Blizzard IV through the loss of their requisite activation buffs or finish casting spells of mana costs you could afford when beginning the cast but not when finishing them (such as through loss of AF3, UI3, or Thin Air).
Spells now always use the greater of Spell Power or Healing Spell Power. A Vercure or a SMN-based Physic are now just as a strong as a Cure, Physic, or Sect-less Benefic.
Casts now snapshot their MP costs and meeting of activation requirements such as Verstone, Verfire, Impact, and Further Ruin at the beginning of their casts, identically to snapshots of attack or casting speed. Loss of necessary activation buffs (e.g. Impact, Enochian) no longer cancel the spell, nor can an increase in mana cost work retroactively to prevent the spell from being cast. (Alternatively, casts snapshot all buffs.)
Combos (and Dualcast, as below) no longer cancel upon starting an action which would cancel them, only upon finishing that action.
Players now enter or reset (from death, in trials or 8-man raids) instances with all cooldowns ready and having filled all resources that can be generated by Abilities or Weaponskills that are usable from outside of combat (Chakra, Aetherflow, Ammunition). Until combat first begins, Draw has only a 5-second cooldown.
Players are now brought back from death with 10% more base mana. Note that this is not affected by Piety, and therefore primarily benefits only Summoners and Red Mages.
Effects which prevent the user from receiving mana no longer prevent the user from receiving mana-generating buffs, only their individual ticks. These will (continue to) work once the restricting effect has faded or been removed.

Direct Hit

Direct Hit chance growth per point reduced from 1% per 39.5 to 1% per 40. It therefore now contributes an added 1% of effective damage on average (4% chance of a bonus 25% damage), per 160 points, up from 155. This value, 160, will be the new standard for all secondary stats.
Direct Hit stat percentile returns are now recalculated following buffs to its effects (e.g. critical hit rate) just as Skill Speed has always been dependent on buffs to Attack Speed, equalizing what would otherwise amount to increased stat value and extreme scaling. Put simply, 2000 Direct Hit stat will afford the same increase to damage regardless of Battle Voice or the Bard passive. It's not as if it doesn't stack, but rather than being worth, say, 15% from a base of 5%, it might be worth a mere 12% from the base of 20%, to the same increase in damage.

Determination

Determination has been buffed slightly, to 1% of damage per 160 points of Determination. Direct Hit’s multiplicity with Critical Strike still gives it a slight lead over Determination, especially where benefitted by multiple simultaneous raid buffs, though Determination has the added benefit of affecting healing spells, such as Clemency or Equilibrium.

Speed

Skill Speed and Spell Speed combined into a single stat, Speed, which now affects Attack Speed, Auto-Attack Rate, Ability Damage*, and Periodic Damage.
(*Does not affect the damage of abilities restricted only by resource generation, such as Shinten or Hellfrog Medium.)
Speed now additionally shortens animation times. What can double-weave at low Speed can now also double-weave at any amount of Speed.
Speed now adjusts auto-attack rate, rather than auto-attack damage. This will improve its value to Paladin, Ninja, and Dark Knight.
Speed now has linear returns, decreasing the character’s GCD by 1% of the remaining value for, at SB levels, every 160 Speed, rather than varying anywhere from 1% per 166 points at 2.49 seconds to under 130 by 1.9 seconds and below. This will decrease its power at very high amounts to oGCD-less classes but should ultimately make it more evenly useful for all jobs and at all stat levels.
Speed's damage increase to periodic damage and the rate increase to auto-attacks now identically increase at 1% per 160 points, rather than following a unique modifier. In other words, that portion of contribution works identically to Determination.
On the whole, Critical Hit and Direct Hit will still outpace Speed between rotational breakpoints when assuming perfect meta play, as the individual power of abilities will often be worth more than their nominal average power as through increased frequency, given that their best periods of use may be less frequent than access to the given skills, and due to the multiplicative nature of stacked raid buffs, but this should give Speed a far fairer chance. Put most simply, Speed over time allows for greater flexibility, while Critical Hit, especially, allows for highest possible maximization.

Critical Hit

Critical Hit now has effectively linear returns. Base cost per % of increased critical strike chance or critical strike damage bonus has been decreased, but costs now increase at the same rate by which critical strike chance and the critical strike damage bonus synergize for added returns per point, leaving its damage gains per point roughly equivalent to that of Direct Hit, Determination, and Speed at 160 points per % damage increase.
Critical Hit stat percentile returns are now recalculated following buffs to its effects (e.g. critical hit rate) just as Skill Speed has always been dependent on buffs to Attack Speed, equalizing what would otherwise amount to increased stat value and extreme scaling. Put simply, 2000 Critical Hit stat will afford the same increase to damage regardless of Battle Litany and Chain Strategem. It's not as if it doesn't stack, but rather than being worth, say, 15% from a base of 5%, it might be worth a mere 9% from the base of 35%, to the same increase in damage.
Critical Hit still remains the lead stat for perfect play in meta compositions, but by an incredibly faint margin, while no longer falling short of Direct Hit at any point. This means it starts at identical value to Determination outside of raid buff compositions, identical value to Direct Hit in raid buff comps, and then gets faintly, slightly stronger than Determination at extreme amounts of Direct+Crit combined totals. Bards and Monks may be slightly curtailed at extreme levels of Critical Hit. Growth-wise, this is a buff to below ~2500 without Critical Hit buff stacking, and a nerf to above 2500 with Critical Hit buff stacking and mechanical Crit dependence. Put simply, it's now tightly balanced against other stats at all ranges of values.

Role Actions

Crutch revised. Crutch - 5 yalm range. Support or be supported by target ally, making you and the target unable to fall below normal movement speed if either is at or above normal movement speed and within 5 yalms. While affected, Stuns will instead Silence and Pacify.
Mana Shift cooldown reduced to 90 seconds. It still reduces caster MP by 20% of their maximum but grants the greater of 20% of the caster's or target's maximum MP, thus increasing its value on targets with greater or lesser maximum MP than the caster.
Goad cooldown reduced to 120 seconds.
Drain replaced with Necrogenesis. Necrogenesis - (Ability) Converts a portion of magical damage dealt into HP. 50%. Lasts 10 seconds. 120-second cooldown.
Second Wind potency increased to 600.
Bloodbath conversion percentile increased from 25% to 30%.
Break replaced with Inanition. Inanition - (Ability) Leadens the target's limbs, slowing their movement speed by 40%, decreasing by 10% every 3 seconds. 60-second cooldown.
Refresh now scales with maximum MP. Its value, on average, to healers is unchanged, but its value to casters and especially other Ranged is much diminished.

Bug Fixes

Tornado Kick now correctly deals its stated potency, rather than double-dipping into the Greased Lightning bonus.
Upheaval now correctly deals its stated potency in Defiance and its damage now benefits from %HP-increasing buffs in the same way the HP itself is benefited, multiplicatively (1.25*1.2 = 1.5) rather than additively (1.25+.2 = 1.45).
Flamethrower may now Direct Hit and/or Critical Hit.
Riddle of Wind now consistently allows queuing of other actions during the whole of its animation, as per all other abilities.

Monk

As of Patch 4.5: All changes remain except the buff to Fists of Fire, which remains at 5%.
Damage of certain abilities now affected by Speed: Shoulder Tackle, Fire Tackle, Earth Tackle, Wind Tackle, Steel Peak, Howling Fist, Elixir Field.
Chakra maximum increased to 7, but one can still only reach a height of 5 outside of combat. If in excess of 5 outside of combat, one will fade every 10 seconds until back to 5. Once at 5 Chakra when out of combat, Meditation will have no effect.
The Forbidden Chakra no longer has a cooldown and now consumes all available Chakra for 50 potency each (1-7).
Purification no longer has a cooldown and will generate 40 TP and decrease enmity by 10% per Chakra consumed (1-7).
Arm of the Destroyer potency increased to 80.
Form Shift has been revised. Rather than rotating to a further trio of weaponskills, it now "grants access" to them without leaving access to the former trio. Thus, after two repetitions from any stance or three from a stanceless state, one has access to all abilities. Once out of combat for a full GCD, Form Shift will begin to trigger automatically, but without triggering its recast globally. It still refreshes the 10-second combo timer as well. Form Shift will now rotate from stanceless directly into Raptor, just as normal actions would permit; Opo-opo is now the third stage from stanceless, rather than the first.
Perfect Balance will now exit into three stacks of Form Shift (full weaponskill access).
Meditation recast time now scales with Attack Speed, at 50% of a GCD (1.25 seconds base). Meditation itself now also has a chance to "Critical Hit" and to thereby (have a 50% chance to) result in a second Chakra generated.
This should slightly improve Monk's ability to make use of downtime. The skill was previously nerfed by over 40% through the decreased potency of The Forbidden Chakra and indirectly through the addition of Deep Meditation, which did not affect Meditation. By giving it the same relative bonus as all other skills, this nerf has at least been reverted somewhat, returning Monk's ranged/downtime skill alternative from the weakest among all ranged skills towards potentially the strongest, as it was in Heavensward. Such changes should increase the consistency of Monk's parses across a variety of fights.
Animation lock of Fists of Earth, Wind, and Fire reduced to almost nothing. Their shared cooldown has been reduced to 80% of one's GCD (2 seconds baseline). Upon equipping the job stone, Monks will automatically assume Fists of Wind. Monks may no longer cancel their Fists of Wind, Earth, or Fire--only swap between them. As there was never any advantage to not using a stance, this merely removes the chance of accidental deactivation.
Shoulder Tackle, Wind Tackle, Fire Tackle, and Earth Tackle animation locks reduced. Riddle of Wind animation lock greatly reduced and now correctly allows skills to be queued during prior to the end of its animation as per all other abilities.
Tornado Kick no longer incorrectly double-dips into the benefits of Greased Lightning. This previously granted it a potency-equivalency of 429 (330*1.3 before adding GL3, Twin, or Dragon), rather than the stated 330. With this bug fixed, its use should be far less obligatory.
At present, optimal play involves using TK before a Coeurl skill once per 30 seconds in pairing with Riddle of Wind. This seems intended to be an especially viable option only at the tail of cooldown burst, breaking even after Internal Release, pulling faintly ahead with Riddle of Fire, and an obligatory but small skill-gap component at the end of both CDs together, such that Riddle of Wind and Fire both see use. Now that Skill Speed provides an equal effective bonus to Tornado Kick's relative value as Critical Hit, Direct Hit, and Determination, it should see wider usability, but with this nerf (bug fix) it should also see less frequent obligatory rotational use -- lost to none, but made overly repetitive for none, either.
Brotherhood no longer grants its 5% damage bonus to the Monk himself, but is no longer limited to physical damage. It affects and is affected by all damage types; spells now similarly deal 5% more damage and can contribute Chakra via Brotherhood. Chance now begins at 50%, but is reduced by 5% with each Chakra thus triggered.
This should cause it see equal value in all compositions, increased value in light parties, and more consistent value on the whole. On the whole, it should also ease timing, especially when nearing a Riddle of Fire burst phase with few to no Chakra at the ready by allowing use of Brotherhood a couple GCDs earlier without significant loss to personal potency. This is a nerf, but slight except to PB-RB-TFC/Puri spams.
Wind Tackle now deals 130 potency and refreshes Greased Lightning. Riddle of Wind now deals no damage and generates no Greased Lightning, but still gives the option for an additional charge and stun. It is available from Fists of Wind for 10 seconds after the use of any form of Shoulder Tackle.
This should greatly reduce the negative impact of ping on making use of Wind Tackle rotationally.
Earth Tackle will now instead cause a 10-yalm backstep if within melee range of the target and the target is immune to knock-backs. Potency increased to 130. This effect is equally responsive to Yaten.
Riddle of Earth now triggers Earth's Reply upon being attacked, rather than solely when taking damage. Complete shielding will no longer prevent its activation or thereby cause the Monk to lose their GL stacks. Riddle of Earth itself now also applies 10% damage mitigation, offering Riddle of Earth situational use as an immediate survival tool, but this does not stack with Earth's Reply. Generating Earth's Reply will no longer consume Riddle of Earth; both effects will coexist with additional applications of Earth's Reply simply replacing the former and each refreshing Greased Lightning. Earth's Reply no longer ends when leaving Fists of Earth, but its duration has been reduced to 16 seconds. You will still, however, be unable to retrigger Greased Lightning (via refreshing Earth's Reply) once leaving Fists of Earth.

Samurai

Damage of Hissatsu: Guren now affected by Speed.
Animation locks of Guren, Third Eye, Hagakure, Meikyou Shisui, Yaten, Gyoten, and Seigan further reduced slightly. Each can now be clipped sooner.
Gekko and Kasha potency reduced back to 420, from 440.
Yukikaze now deals 420 potency, but as unaspected damage. This is effectively equal to its 380 Slashing value, but means it has no opportunity cost to newly apply Slashing to a new target. This should improve its accessibility when the only job able to apply Slashing within a party, and make Samurai the preferred applier for adds.
Hagakure cooldown reduced from 40 seconds to 35 seconds. This allows for several more breakpoints between minimum Speed and sub-2-second GCDs.
Meikyou Shisui cooldown reduced to 70 seconds.
I felt that a reduction all the way to 60 seconds would lend NIN too great of rDPS benefit alongside SAM, given that it already has the benefit of up to 5378 relative potency per TA without Meikyou Shisui, making it already NIN's highest rDPS contributor and likewise making SAM feel rather dependent on NIN. Likewise, the 35 second Hagakure CD already encompasses 3 additional mid-speed breakpoints and later adjusted breakpoints for higher speeds as well. Thus, Meikyou has been accelerated only to accommodate Hagakure, not to add even more raw burst power or further NIN interaction (with the inadvertent exception that it does make the pre-pop MKSS for Yuki-Shifu-Kasha very effective and aligns 2nd MKSS to 2nd TA).
Cooldown of Kaiten has been reduced to 1 second. Kaiten cannot be used to override itself and must be consumed before another queued Kaiten can be actuated.
Hakaze TP cost reduced from 60 to 50.
Fuga TP cost reduced from 140 to 120. Potency increased to 120.
Enpi TP cost reduced from 140 to 120. Enpi potency increased to 140. Enhanced Enpi potency decreased to a bonus of 260, for a total of 400. Base damage now roughly equal to Piercing Talon (120*1.1*1.05) or Throwing Daggers (120*1.2).
Third Eye mitigation effect increased to 15%.
Seigan potency increased to 240 from 200. (Efficiency: 16, equal to Guren's 16 in single-target, to be compared to Shinten's 12, and Yaten/Gyoten's 10, essentially generating 60 extra potency over base Shinten consumption. This is now a more viable benefit outside of Ninja compositions relative to the enmity reduction of Merciful Eyes, and should now be wholly worth its additional oGCD, which tends to need more precise and compact usage than Merciful Eyes.)
Merciful Eyes healing potency increased to 400.
Between this and especially the basic mitigation percentile, Samurai should have the situational advantage of being able to stand nearer to explosions for reduced downtime, similarly to Ninja's Shadeshift or per the Monk buffs to Riddle of Earth, but with the unique advantage of frequency.
Meditate’s check for movement (via turning) has been slightly delayed.

Dragoon

[Tentative] [To be stacked with the suggestions below.] Ranged classes no longer classified as dealing Piercing damage, and therefore no longer affected by Disembowel. Dragoon pDPS increased to compensate.

Disembowel contributed 4.1 to 4.5% of DRG tDPS with a single skilled ranged DPS.

To compensate, Disembowel again increases Piercing damage (now limited to Dragoons and Lancers only) by 10%. Piercing Damage affects roughly 95% of Dragoon damage, making this a 4.75% buff. This is a slight overbuff compared to the ~4.3% of before. 0.45% overbuff.

To compensate for that, Full Thrust potency reduced to 440 (.2% nerf; makes LS-F&C/WT more viable), Vorpal to 240 (.16%), Chaos Thrust to 270 (.14%). Between increased Speed value, given the desired maximum GCD speed, and the nerf to Critical Hit and Direct Hit buffs to players already high in passive chance, this should come out roughly even, and further minute adjustments could go further from there.

The primary rDPS dependency at this point will be the inclusion of an especially strong pDPS member with good per-120 output as to best pair with Dragon Sight. Samurai would probably be the strongest rDPS recipient as such due to Higan and Guren, and Dragon Sight lasting long enough for up to 215 Kenki expenditure on Meikyo or 205 without, especially if paired with Ninja for multiplicity on TA. (A prepopped Meikyo for instant Slashing could sync with 2nd Dragon Sight on third Meikyo if the first Dragon Sight is held slightly, but otherwise sync should not be assumed.) Summoner, sync-buffed (below) RDM, and BLM, MCH, and the now more burst-centric Bard should all make decent pairings as well.

Abilities now affected by Speed: Geirskogul, Nostrond, Jump, Spineshatter Dive, Dragonfire Dive, Mirage Dive.
Life Surge maximum healing increased to 20% of HP.
Lance Mastery II now causes "Allows for immediate execution of Wheeling Thrust after landing Fang and Claw, or Fang and Claw after landing Wheeling Thrust~~, increasing potency by 100.~~ and causes use of either to increase the potency of the next by 100." Thus, one can still get the bonus potency even if they use rotational lengths of 4 GCDs per half-combo, down from 5, allowing greater freedom of rotation and allowing higher Speeds to use 2 FT combos per CT combo (and 3 combos per Heavy Thrust) if they so choose. [This could contribute significant pDPS, and may require further minute potency nerfs or reshuffling to decrease what could otherwise be an overly hefty breakpoint in Speed stat value.]
Life of the Dragon now ends automatically after your third Nostrond. The duration that remained then on Life of the Dragon will be added to that of the reset Blood of the Dragon.
Mirage Dive will now replace the hotbar slot of Jump once Jump has triggered access to Mirage Dive, lasting until the activation buff fades.
Mirage Dive will now replace the hotbar slot of Spineshatter Dive once Spineshatter Dive has triggered access to Mirage Dive, lasting until the activation buff fades.
Sonic Thrust will now replace the hotbar slot of Doomspike once activated by the latter’s use, lasting until the combo fades or is cancelled.
Fang & Claw and Wheeling Thrust will now, by default, share a hotbar slot, replacing one or the other based on which is currently possible to use. Adding a second hotbar slot of either weaponskill to your bar will nullify the pairing until one or the other is removed.

Black Mage

Currently, BLM badly outpaces SAM in fights that require melee downtime or little caster downtime (from movement) without any of its mobility vulnerabilities being addressed, mostly due to the nominal 20 (effective 46.8, or 36 w/o Magick and Mend II) potency buff to Fire IV. These changes should faintly taper off its maximal damage while increasing its situation-derived damage floor, largely through QoL buffs and a slightly diminished range between punished and unpunished timings.

All stacking mechanics now use the same system of 20% effect per stack.
Umbral Ice now uses its own tick rate at 20% of max MP per stack, per GCD, dealt in ticks of a quarter of a GCD each, starting a quarter-GCD after entering UI. This means that a lucky normal tick can still fix a slight overspending on mana, but inversely the longest one would ever half to wait to be able to cast something is a quarter of a GCD (.625 seconds or less).
Astral Fire and Umbral Ice reduce the cast times and mana costs of the opposite element by 20% per stack. (Previously a MP cost reduction of 50/50/75% and a cast time reduction of 0/0/50%.)
MP Cost reductions. Blizzard III and Thunder II MP costs reduced from 1440 to 1200. Blizzard cost reduced from 480 to 400. Scathe, Blizzard II, Blizzard IV, and Thunder MP cost reduced from 960 to 800. Thunder III MP cost reduced from 1920 to 1600. Thunder IV MP cost reduced from 2160 to 1800. This ensures particular breakpoints in mana recovery and that the modified mana costs across elements will be sufficient for normal rotation.
Astral Fire now increases Fire damage by 20% per stack. (Formerly increased damage by 40/60/80, decreased mana costs by 25/25/50, and cast times by 0/0/50%.) No longer diminishes base Ice damage.
Umbral Hearts now diminish mana cost by 60%, identically Umbral Ice III. This allows 4.85 Fire I/IVs after depleting Umbral Hearts with Fire I/IVs, up from 4.7.
Potencies adjusted to compensate for the decrease from 40/60/80% Astral Fire bonus to 20/40/60%. Only Fire IV is negatively affected (5% nerf compared to the 300 potency, buff relative to the former 280 value). In all other cases this is merely a buff to Ice spells and slightly to Fire AoE.
Fire and Blizzard potency increased to 200 (-1.235% to Fire; +11.11% to Blizzard).
Fire II and Blizzard II potency increased to 100 (+11.1% to Fire II; +100% to Blizzard II). Note that Fire II is still 33.3% more efficient than Blizzard II.
Fire III and Blizzard III potency increased to 300 (no change to Fire III; +12.5% to Blizzard III).
Fire IV and Blizzard IV potency increased to 320 (-5.2% <nerf> to Fire IV from current version, +1.6% <buff> relative to former 280 potency; +23% to Blizzard IV).
Flare potency increased to 300 (+2.56%).
Freeze potency increased to 120. 20% more efficient than Blizzard II. 11% less efficient than Fire II.
Scathe now deals a flat 150 potency. Its additional effect has been removed.
Black Mage maximum MP increased by ~3.36%, from 15480 to 16000 at level 70. The mana costs of each skill remain as above. (Fire III, at 2400 MP, is now simply 15% of base MP, rather than 15.50387596899225%., Thunder III now 11.25% instead of 12.40031007751938%, etc.) This prevents one from being able to overspend into not having enough mana to cast Blizzard III.
Convert now therefore restores 4800 MP, exactly enough for two Fire IVs without Umbral Hearts or 3 Fire IVs and a Blizzard III with Umbral Hearts.
Fire IV, Blizzard IV, and Enochian now share action keys. The second of Enochian->Fire IV and Enochian->Blizzard IV cannot be queued until the prior’s animation has mostly completed, thus preventing accidental represses on Enochian from accidentally triggering an unintended action (e.g. Enochian -> B4 instead of Enochian -> T3 -> B4).
Manaward effect will now activate as soon as the animation begins, increasing the responsiveness of its shield.

Summary: Offers a bit more mobility in the form of less punishing Ice casts and reduced phase lengths, but seeks mostly just to make the stacks far easier to understand. Blizzard IV still situationally skippable but generally more valuable. Output very slightly reduced in perfect turret fights and increased everywhere else through increased rotational smoothness and flexibility.

Red Mage

Certain 4.4 buffs reverted. Veraero and Verthunder potency returned to 300. Contre Sixte potency reduced to 320 from 350 (300 pre-buff). Verholy and Verflare potency reduced to 540, but are no partially AoE, while the melee combo has been buffed for equal net potency in single-target for the melee+Flare/Holy combo.

Damage of certain abilities now affected by Speed (secondary stat): Corps-a-corps, Displacement, Fleche, Contre Sixte.

Verholy and Verflare now deal 50% of initial damage as AoE to enemies within 8 yalms, equal to a Verfire or Verstone.

Verholy and Verflare potency reduced to 540 to compensate for their now being AoEs. In place of the 60 lost potency to the overall Melee-Flare combo, Enchanted Riposte, Zwerchhau, and Redoublement have been adjusted from 210 to 240 (+30), 290 to 340 (+50), and 470 to 440 (-30), standardizing Black/White paired mana value to 4 potency per mana (see below). This is a loss of 10 potency compared to the 4.4 buff to the overall Melee-Flare chain, but allows it greater flexibility and utility in exchange. With the much-increased frequency of Melee-Flare combos (see below) even that should end in a notable buff.
For symmetry with the above changes to the enchanted melee combo, Riposte now deals a base of 140 potency, Zwerchhau 240 potency, and Redoublement 340 potency. The full combo now has the same potency per GCD as Jolt + Veraero/Verthunder, but lacks the additional mana and still falls short of Verfire/Verstone + Veraero/Verthunder, thus simply trading damage for mobility.
All Enchanted weaponskills are now embonused by both physical and magical damage buffs atop the Slashing modifier. Regular weaponskills now use the Slashing modifier. All other physical damage skills are now unaspected Physical.
Casts of Verfire, Verstone, and Impact can no longer be cancelled by the relevant buff ending before the cast completes. If the requisite activation buff is present when the cast begins, the cast will run to completion and cast successfully so long as it is not cancelled or interrupted.
Attacking an invincible enemy will now still trigger Dualcast.
With the above change, Dualcast has been revised to assume, server-side, that it has been triggered, and has been made less susceptible to latency.
Dualcast is no longer consumed by any action other than mounting, teleporting, returning, or using a weaponskill (upon completion, not activation, of mount summon, teleport, or return). However, it can again be clicked off and aura-cancelled.
Corps-a-corps cooldown reduced to 25 seconds, down from 35. (+40% ppm; 1.14 pps buff.)
Displacement cooldown reduced to 30 seconds, down from 40, but potency has been removed. This is a 2.5 pps nerf, and roughly the only notable nerf RDM has received. RDM should find this a slight QoL improvement, however, especially in smaller arenas.
Enchanted Riposte now consumes 25 Mana, down from 30. A full combo therefore requires only 75/75 mana, down from 80/80.
Enchanted Moulinet now consumes 25 Mana, down from 30.
Moulinet now deals 100 potency. This is the same potency per GCD as Scatter, but lacks the mana generation and potential to trigger Enhanced Scatter. It adds an alternative for mobility from within melee range, at slight sustained dps cost.
Impact is now a trait, called Impulse. Impulse - with every Dualcast, you generate a stack of Impulse, causing your next Jolt II to generate an additional 1 Black and White mana and 1% of base mana.
Embolden effect no longer limited to physical damage dealt. Instead, it increases all damage dealt by (up to) 10%. However, the effect now ramps up, rather than fading down, and the duration of each stage has been reduced from 4 seconds to 3 seconds (total of 15 seconds' duration), while the ability's cooldown has been reduced to 90 seconds.
Thus, optimal use alongside a 5th or 6th GCD Trick Attack would be to use Embolden at the beginning or tail the second cast's gap (~2 seconds into the fight), such that it reaches 6% or 8% as Trick Attack starts and remains for all or most of Trick Attack's uptime. This does not change its relative uptime (available a sixth of the time, equal to Trick Attack but averaging half its potency), but it should make it far easier to time and therefore increase its practical output greatly.
Manafication no longer cancels existing combos. This leaves the RDM free to start a combo, depleting until 50/49 or so, doubling, completing the first combo, and then spending the Flare/Holy and a balancing cast to ready an immediate second combo for tremendous burst over 8-9 GCDs. This should allow for 4-8 more GCDs of flexibility in its use.
Vercure potency increased to 400. It is now identically powerful to other basic heals.

Summary: Increased frequency and flexibility of melee skills, and greater compositional versatility and ease of timing with other raid buffs. Greater synergy from and to casters, while the former minute dependence on DRG has been completely removed. QoL adjustments.

Machinist

[Tentative] [To be stacked with the suggestions below.] Machinist attacks are no longer classified as Piercing damage. The following changes return the lost potential damage, making Machinist always as effective as if a Dragoon were using Disembowel on its targets.

Note: %-of-damage skill contribution averages approximately: Auto-attack (15%), Heated Clean Shot (14%), Heated Slug Shot (11%), Heated Split Shot (11%), Cooldown (10%), Wildfire (7%), Gauss Round (6.5%), Rook Auto-attacks (5.5%), Ricochet (4.5%), Rook Overload (4%), Split Shot (3%), Charged Rook Auto-attacks (3%), Slug Shot (2%), Flamethrower (1%), Heartbreak (1%), Hot Shot (1%). 95% of MCH's damage is affected by Piercing, meaning we'd need roughly a 4.75% buff.

The buffs below probably contribute less than 1% of actual additional tDPS.

Simplest fix: Increase Gauss Barrel (or, as below, Smoking Gun trait) to a 10% damage bonus, up from 5%. This would leave issues only at 50 and earlier, and would provide a slight further buff.

Alternatively, we could increase the Hot Shot damage bonus to 10% for a 2% bonus, then increase the potency of Heated Split Shot, Heated Slug Shot, Heated Clean Shot, and Cooldown 10 potency each (to 200, 240, 280, 240, respectively) for a further 2%, and -- only if necessary even after bringing MCH rDPS up towards Bard's -- allow native buffs to affect the turrets for a further 1.2%, in a way that spaces out the damage gains more evenly.

As of Patch 4.5: Only the Hot Shot buff remains as such. Hot Shot remains 10%. Ammunition damage bonus reverted to 25. Further, Weaponskill damage bonus due to Heated state reduced from 30 to 25 to compensate for what would otherwise be an overbuff in the form of Hot Shot. oGCD damage bonuses reverted. A ranged job, with its control issues fixed and its rDPS now even with its competitor, does not need to be the 3rd highest theoretical DPS in the game (even if held back by said issues on fights other than Chaos).
Damage of certain abilities now affected by Speed (secondary stat): Rook Auto-turret, Bishop Auto-turret, Gauss Round, Flamethower, Richochet, Bishop Overdrive*, Rook Overdrive*. (* Indirect scaling.)
Wildfire now takes a moment longer before summing its damage for its explosion. Though still shown as a 10-second duration on tooltip and on-screen, it is now actually effectively 11 seconds. This has delayed the animation slightly and the damage dealt floating combat text by a little more.
Rook Auto-turret and Bishop Auto-turret now benefit by aura directly from your external buffs (Fey Wind, Balance, Battle Litany, etc.). They still do not benefit from Hot Shot, the overheat effect, or traits which effect you personally, however.
Hypercharge now affects the Machinist itself, with the turret being affected only by aura by proxy. Thus, Hypercharge will remain even if you resummon your turret or swap between Rook and Bishop.
New summonings of Rook Auto-turret and Bishop Auto-turret still share recast times with their previous summons. A newly summoned Bishop Auto-turret will attack the moment an enemy enters its range and a newly summoned Rook Auto-turret the moment you fire upon a target or use Focus Fire upon one. While desummoned, recast times will continue to cool, but will not instantly be refreshed upon resummon. This allows you to resummon for turret movement after a turret attack without losing turret uptime, so long as one takes fewer than 3 seconds to do so.
Hypercharge is no longer a two-minute cooldown. Instead, it now consumes MP, at the same rate as the new Battle Voice (see below), at ~75% of the drain cost of former Foe Requiem, plus a ~10% maximum MP activation cost. This allows MCH to attach itself to a greater variety of compositions in terms of CD synergy and alignment and make as much use of Refresh as Bard. Note that this retains the same natural pseudo-CD and uptime as before. %Damage has been increased to 6% to stand more evenly against Bard's consolidated Battle Voice+Foe Requiem (see section below).
Rook Overdrive and Bishop Overdrive now cause the turret to instantly deal as much potency as it would have over 30 seconds, with equally increased chance to Direct, Critical, or Direct-Critical hit and with the same damage bonuses, ratioed over their remaining time compared to the next 30 seconds. That damage therefore scale with Speed and Hypercharge. Reads "Damage scales with the remaining duration of buffs on the Rook/Bishop Auto-turret".
Flamethrower is now correctly capable of Direct Hits and Critical Hits, but no longer snapshots damage bonuses onto its whole duration, only the following tick. Its total potency has been doubled, to a rate of 100 potency per GCD. It now ticks every .5 seconds for 20 potency and 5 heat each tick. (Note: Damage is increased by Speed.)
Auto-attacks may now continue to be dealt during Flamethrower, though without animation.
Moving during Flamethower will now merely pause its channel until again stationary, rather than ending the effect. Using another attack during this time will still cancel Flamethower.
Spread Shot potency increased to 100, up from 80.
New ability, Focus Fire added, sharing a slot with Rook Auto-Turret and Supporting Fire, swapped to automatically once Rook Auto-turret takes the field. Focus Fire - "Marks the target for Focus Fire, causing your turret to attack the given target regardless of whom you attack."
New ability, Supporting Fire added, sharing a slot with Rook Auto-Turret and Focus Fire, swapped to when targeting an enemy already marked by Focus Fire or no target at all. Supporting Fire - "Rescinds the Focus Fire order, making your turret again attack whatever you attack."
New ability, Bishop's Pursuit added, sharing a slot with Bishop Auto-turrent and End Pursuit, swapped to automatically once Bishop Auto-turret takes the field. Bishop's Pursuit - "Marks the target within 20 yalms of your Bishop Auto-turret with Bishop's Pursuit, attracting your turret towards the target. Casting this again with Bishop's Pursuit already on the target or with no target selected will instead end the effect, pausing the Bishop Auto-turret's movement." (Movement = 5 yalms per second.)
New ability, End Pursuit added, sharing a slot with Bishop Auto-turrent and Bishop's Pursuit, swapped to automatically whenever targeting an enemy marked by Bishop's Pursuit or no target at all. Bishop's Pursuit - "Ends Bishop's Pursuit, pausing the Bishop Auto-turret's movement."
Rapid Fire now reduces your weaponskill recast time by 30%, down from a maximum of 40%, rather than reducing it to a flat 1.5 seconds. Its number of weaponskills affectable has been increased from 3 to 4 to compensate. This results in the same throughput increase at base Speed, and an increase if above base Speed, while somewhat decreasing clipping issues for higher-ping players.
Gauss Barrel removed. Replaced with the level 52 trait, Smoking Gun, which introduces the heat mechanic and increases damage dealt by 5%.
Barrel Stabilizer renamed to Re-centering.
Wildfire now shares a hotbar slot with a new ability, Detonate, which causes the existing damage of your Wildfire to ignite, ending the buff instantly for immediate damage. It shares a 3 second cooldown with Wildfire itself. Wildfire will detonate automatically if the target attempts to leave the battlefield or go invulnerable or if its remaining HP falls below twice the amount stored within Wildfire (i.e. fatal Wildfire damage).
Wildfire now causes 25% of your damage to instead be siphoned to Wildfire, to be dealt at double damage upon detonation. The detonation does not generate enmity against the Machinist. This therefore does not adjust the damage dealt over Wildfire's duration, but reduces enmity output by 25% over the duration of burst. It should also provide even more satisfying explosion numbers.
Wildfire now additionally inflicts 50% of its damage to all enemies within 8 yalms of the target.
New weaponskill, Grenado Shot, added at level 50. Shares a slot with Spread Shot, replacing it when over 12 yalms from the target. 25 yalm range. Deals 100 potency to all enemies within 8 yalms of the target, equal to Spread Shot. Costs 140 TP (20 more than Spread Shot). Standard ammunition and heat effects.

Note: Suggestions incomplete. No fix for Heat gameplay issues/lackluster-ness. Hot Shot will likely be included in said changes once they're fully framed. Piercing dependence also remains.
Issues mitigated: AoE relative immobility, burst enmity, button bloat, Hypercharge situational imbalance, compositional lock-in, Rapid Fire clipping, (Skill) Speed value.
Issues solved: Flamethrower irritations, Wildfire issues.

Bard

[Tentative] [To be stacked with the suggestions below.] Bard's attacks are no longer classified as Piercing damage. The following changes return the lost potential damage, making Bard always as effective as if a Dragoon were using Disembowel on its targets.

Note: %-of-damage skill contribution averages approximately: Heavy Shot (20%), Auto-Attack (15%), Refulgent Arrow (12%), Stormbite (10%), Empyreal Arrow (9%), Bloodletter (8%), Caustic Bite (8%), Pitch Perfect (7%), Straight Shot (3%), Sidewinder (3%), Iron Jaws -direct damage- (2%), Misery's End (1.5%), Songs (.4% each), Stormbite -direct damage- .3%, Caustic Bite -direct damage- .3%. Roughly 28 to 36% of all damage dealt is dealt within Raging Strikes windows.

Raging Strikes replaced with Hawkeye, which would guarantee accuracy, increase damage by 20%, and reduces enmity generated based on range from the target (4% per yalm past 10 yalms, to a maximum of 60% reduction). This would about a 3% buff, whereas Piercing amounted to a maximum of 4% damage.

To compensate further, Heavier Shot chance could be increased to 25% (a little over a 1% DPS increase).

This more or less fixes the tDPS in optimal cases. However, Bard would remain underpowered in lower level content due to the gap between Straighter Shot and Refulgent Arrow (mostly inconsequential) and especially subject to RNG now that so much of its damage is windowed (consequential, but less easily solved, as it requires mitigating the deviation caused by Straighter Shot).

Damage of certain abilities now affected by Speed (secondary stat): Sidewinder, Perfect Pitch, Dissonance[/B] (see below).
Bloodletter and Rain of Death recast times now scale with one's GCD. So, too, therefore, do Twin Bolt, Arrow Helix, and the rate of Repertoire gain via Attunement (whereby The Wanderer's Minuet converts refreshed Bloodletter & Rain of Death into Repertoire).
A new Trait, Quelling Strikes, has been added at level 20. When not already holding the highest amount of enmity against a target, your enmity generated is decreased based on existing enmity greater than your own, to a maximum of 30% reduction.
Foe Requiem removed. In its place, Battle Voice has been buffed and is now MP-based with no cooldown. Foe Requiem's MP drain rate, now on Battle Voice, has been reduced by ~25%, but with a ~10% MP cost attached to the ability's activation. This lends more control over the timing of the Bard's rDPS bonuses, allowing it to fit more compositions. Atop the basic Direct Hit bonus (reduced proportionately to the difference in uptime between Battle Voice and Foe Requiem), during Mage's Ballad Battle Voice now provides an additional 6% critical hit rate (Further Insight) [worth about 2.8% damage+healing], during Army's Paeon it now provides an additional 4% Attack Speed (We March) [worth about 2.9% damage during high oGCD burst, and close to 4% for many jobs outside of said burst], and during The Wanderer's Minuet it now provides an additional 3% damage dealt (Attunement) [best burst, least utility, decent lull/sustain]. These secondary bonuses affect the Bard as well, just as Foe Requiem previously did, though perhaps not quite so usefully in some cases (especially Mage's Ballad if already at high crit).
Note that this retains the same natural pseudo-CD as Foe Requiem previously had and uptime as their combined effects had before. This is neither a throughput buff nor nerf to rDPS, but simply an increase to compositional flexibility.
Refulgent Arrow now shares a slot with Heavy Shot, replacing it upon activation. At level 70, the Heavier Shot trait is upgraded to Heaven's Bow, which instead gives Heavy Shot a 20% chance to upgrade to Refulgent Arrow.
Thus one can spend the 10n potency (rather than the 30n potency of wasting the chance to generate another Refulgent Arrow) to rebuff earlier if necessary while waiting for Barrage without wasting the RA generated. This eases DoT maintenance at minimized ppgcd waste during holds without requiring a separate hotkey for a usually unavailable skill.
Mage's Ballad buffed via "Additional Effect: Further Insight - Bloodletter and Rain of Death may also trigger Repertoire upon critical hit." (Rain of Death has a chance to trigger this only against the main target.) This doubles down on the hasty "wastefulness" of Mage's Ballad, but in a way that buffs it to be more in line with The Wanderer's Minuet.
Army's Paeon buffed.
Now reads: "Additional Effect: We March - Converts Bloodletter and Rain of Death into Twin Bolt and Arrow Helix. These share the recast timers of the originals. Grants Repertoire if critical damage over time is dealt by Caustic Bite or Stormbite. Each weaponskill reduces the recast timers of your damaging abilities by an amount equal to your weaponskill recast time.
"Repertoire Effect: Increases Attack Speed by 10% for the first stack, 15% for the second stack, and 18% for the third stack. Twin Bolt and Arrow Helix may consume up to 3 stacks in order to ignore up to 4 seconds of their recast time per stack.[/B]
With Twin Bolt, you get an extra weaponskill as an oGCD every six GCDs, rather than a set 130 potency. Army's Paeon likewise gives up to an extra weaponskill every six GCDs, effectively cuts Twin Bolt down to three GCDs, and allows one to exchange passive Haste to hasten choice weaponskills by further rushing Twin Bolt. So, you can go ham firing Heavy Shot after Heavy Shot until you proc Refulgent Arrow, use that with Twin Bolt for a second hit, then Heavy Shot again, proc Refulgent Arrow early, use it, and skip the remaining cooldown on Twin Bolt in order to use it for another double Refulgent Arrow again, albeit at cost of your haste stacks. This approximately triples your rate of Refulgent Arrow usage while offering powerful AoE options via mass-DoTs or mass-Refulgent Arrow. This should equate to around a ppgcd increase of nearly 100 in single-target combat.
The Wanderer's Minuet slightly buffed via "Additional Effect: Attunement - Converts Bloodletter and Rain of Death into Pitch Perfect and Dissonance. Each time Bloodletter or Rain of Death would refresh, gain a stack of Repertoire." An additional graphic has been added to the job gauge during The Wanderer's Minuet to show the time until the next added Repertoire stack. If stacks are already maxed, the added stack will not be applied until the previously held stacks are consumed.
Pitch Perfect now shares a slot with Bloodletter and Twin Bolt, replacing either upon entering The Wanderer's Minuet. The cooldown of Perfect Pitch has been removed. In its place, a transparent radial indicator will now indicate the time until your next free Repertoire.
New ability: Dissonance. Shares a slot with Rain of Death and Arrow Helix, replacing it upon entering The Wanderer's Minuet. Deals AoE damage of 80/190/330 potency. Dissonance has no cooldown. In its place, a transparent radial indicator will now indicate the time until your next free Repertoire.
New ability: Twin Bolt. Shares a slot with with Bloodletter and Perfect Pitch, replacing either upon entering Army's Paeon. Shares cooldown with Bloodletter, Arrow Helix, and Rain of Death. Twin Bolt duplicates your most recent weaponskill against its target. (When used with Quick Nock or Wide Volley, the full AoE is redealt.)
New ability: Arrow Helix. Shares a slot with Rain of Death and Dissonance, replacing either upon entering Army's Paeon. Shares cooldown with Bloodletter, Twin Bolt, and Rain of Death. Arrow Helix duplicates the damage of your most recent weaponskill to all enemies within 8 yalms of its target, averaged with 100 potency each. (When used with Quick Nock or Wide Volley, the full AoE is redealt.) Duration of additional effects is split over all enemies, to a minimum of 10% duration. [This includes the reset duration from Iron Jaws. Mass-DoTing enemies into Iron Jaws against the smaller mass of the surviving enemies can be immensely effective, but against the same number of enemies (e.g. 10 or more) it would only return durations to their original values.]
Thus, one can guarantee Repertoire generation off a single-tick mass-DoT just before The Wanderer's Minuet or upon starting Army's Paeon to quickly maximize its haste and can deal massive focus AoE damage off Refulgent Arrow.
Raging Strikes replaced with Hawkeye. Hawkeye - 80-second cooldown. Increases damage by 10% while decreasing your enmity generated based on your range from the enemy or enemies affected, to a maximum of 60% reduction at maximum range.
Repelling Shot movement and animation speeds greatly increased. Range increased to 12 yalms. Animation may now also be clipped into another ability sooner.
New weaponskill, Wide Volley, added at level 50. Shares a slot with Quick Nock, replacing it when over 12 yalms from the target. 25 yalm range. Deals 110 potency to all enemies within 8 yalms of the target, equal to Quick Nock. Costs 140 TP (20 more than Quick Nock).

Issues mitigated: Low Speed weight, ~~imbalance between songs~~, button bloat, lackluster song pervasiveness/cohesion.
In Progress: Army's Paeon, Mage's Ballad.
In deliberation: Repertoire generation.

Summoner

Damage of certain abilities now affected by Speed (secondary stat): Aerial Slash, Aerial Blast, Shockwave, Mountain Buster, Landslide, Earthen Fury, Flaming Crush, Crimson Cyclone, Inferno, Ahk Morn, Wyrmwave, Shadow Flare, Painflare, Fester, Energy Drain, Deathflare.
Sic no longer prevents the manual casting of spells and abilities.
Pet abilities and movement orders have been adjusted to be more responsive. Pet spells will now cancel to immediately cast pet abilities, but will be able to clip the pet ability animations sooner to resume casting. Pet skills may now be queued at the same poll rate as players.
Pet abilities are now included on the Arcanist/Summoner's hotbar by default, adapting with the current pet. This does not include the "basic attack", but will include the three other skills and, upon level 40, each pet's form of Enkindle, in place of the Enkindle ability. These may be individually placed for each pet.
With the above changes, even if triggered from the pet menu instead, pet abilities should all feel more like casting oGCDs of your own, but without being locked by your own animations (making them actually more fluid than your own), than the traditional unresponsiveness of pet skills.
Pet movement speed increased by 40% outside of PvP.
Cast time of Wind Blade and Gust reduced to .5 seconds, down from 1.0 seconds.
If added to the hotbar, Heel/Stay are now a toggle by default. Adding both actions to your bar will decouple this action. Upon removal of the other, they will remain decoupled until either is readded.
The default behavior of Stay has been adjusted. A new command, Hold, has been added. During Stay, it will maintain its relative position but will ensure it is within cast range of its assigned targets, your targets, or you, in order of else priority. Thus a pet maintaining Stay will stay at max distance trailing you but within reach to do combat. During Hold it will stay regardless of the ability to continue contributing.
If your pet reaches such a distance as would unsummon it, it will instead teleport to within its casting range of you.
Pets can no longer wake dragons in Pagos and Pyros.
By default, Pets will weave spell casts into their movement and vice versa, thus moving for 2.5 seconds, casting for .5 seconds, and so on repeating. Double-hitting Heel will cause your pet to fully prioritize movement until reaching you or being given another command.
Dreadwyrm Trance and Deathflare combined into a single key. They share a 2-second recast timer. Adding the other to your hotbar will decouple them.
Summon Bahamut and Enkindle Bahamut now combined into a single key. Adding the other to your hotbar will decouple them.
Bahamut is now considered a pet and assumes all pet bar functions. If any pet skills have been added to the bar that Bahamut cannot use, the first will by default be replaced with Stay, the second by Heel, and the third by Move. These, too, may be set individually for Bahamut, just as for any Egi.
Cross-class abilities no longer trigger Wyrmwave.

Ninja

Damage of certain abilities now affected by Speed (secondary stat): Bahavacakra, Ninjutsu, Dream Within a Dream, Trick Attack, Mug, Assassinate.
Shukuchi cooldown reduced from 60 seconds to 45.
Smokescreen cooldown reduced from 180 seconds to 120.
Ten Chi Jin's check for movement upon activation and cessation of the Ten Chi Jin buff upon movement have each been slightly delayed (by ~.4 seconds) to make the skill's use slightly more forgiving.
Note: Speed now increases the frequency of auto-attacks and therefore now increases rate of Ninki gauge growth.

Tanks and Healers (QoL context only; no real balance adjustments):

Scholar

Ability damage or healing now affected by Speed (secondary stat): Energy Drain, Lustrate, Indomitability, Whispering Dawn, Excogitation, Whispering Dawn.
Sic no longer prevents the manual casting of spells and abilities.
Embrace (Eos) and Embrace (Selene) now share a slot and are added to the player’s default Scholar hotbar upon job acquisition. They will be added to the hotbars of existing Scholars. As always, they can be removed at any time.
Whispering Dawn (Eos) and Silent Dusk (Selene) now share a slot and are added to the player’s default Scholar hotbar upon job acquisition. They will be added to the hotbars of existing Scholars. As always, they can be removed at any time.
Fey Caress and Fey Covenant now share a slot and are added to the player’s default Scholar hotbar upon job acquisition. They will be added to the hotbars of existing Scholars. As always, they can be removed at any time.
Fey Illumination and Fey Wind now share a slot and are added to the player’s default Scholar hotbar upon their acquisition. They will be added to the hotbars of existing Scholars. As always, they can be removed at any time.
Pet movement speed increased by 40% outside of PvP.
Cast time of Embrace reduced to 1 seconds, down from 2 seconds.
If added to the hotbar, Heel/Stay are now a toggle by default. Adding both actions to your bar will decouple this action. Upon removal of the other, they will remain decoupled until either is readded.
The default behavior of Stay has been adjusted. A new command, Hold, has been added. During Stay, it will maintain its relative position but will ensure it is within cast range of its assigned targets, your targets, or you, in order of else priority. Thus a pet maintaining Stay will stay at max distance trailing you but within reach to do combat. During Hold it will stay regardless of the ability to continue contributing.
If your pet reaches such a distance as would unsummon it, it will instead teleport to within its casting range of you.
Pets can no longer wake dragons in Pagos and Pyros.
By default, Pets will weave spell casts into their movement and vice versa, thus moving for 2 seconds, casting for 1 second, and so forth repeating. Double-hitting Heel will cause your pet to fully prioritize movement until reaching you or being given another command.
Miasma II now deals 10% less damage to its second target hit, 20% less to the third, and 30% less to all further enemies.

White Mage

Ability damage and/or healing now affected by Speed (secondary stat): Assize, Asylum, Tetragrammaton.
Benediction cooldown reduced to 150 seconds, down from 180.
Stone III potency increased from 210 to 220. (This was previously a gap of only 10 potency over Stone II or 60 over Stone I, as compared to the 90 potency bonus of Broil over Ruin or 30 potency bonus of Malefic II over Malefic).
Stone IV potency increased from 250 to 260.

Astrologian

Ability damage and/or healing now affected by Speed (secondary stat): Earthly Star, Collective Unconscious, Lady of Crowns, Lord of Crowns, Essential Dignity.
Now starts automatically in Diurnal Sect. By default, Diurnal Sect and Nocturnal Sect now share a hotbar slot. Adding the Nocturnal Sect to your bar in addition to the Diurnal/Nocturnal shared slot will nullify the pairing until one or the other is removed. Adding the Nocturnal Sect over the current slot Diurnal/Nocturnal shared slot will reverse the default behavior, causing you to start in Nocturnal Sect.
Malefic II potency increased from 180 to 190, to compensate for the loss of 5% Attack Speed or Damage as previously tied to the Diurnal and Nocturnal Sects, respectively.

Time Dilation now refreshes absorption HP consumed from your applications of Nocturnal Field, to a maximum of 50% restoration. Celestial Opposition does the same, but to a maximum of only 25%.

Time Dilation and Celestial Opposition now only extend the duration of native Astrologian effects. (Does not extend Lucid Dreaming, Cleric Stance, Eye for an Eye, Surecast, or Largesse.)
(See General Changes.) In 8-man instances, until beginning combat, Draw has a 5-second cooldown.

Paladin

Damage of certain abilities now affected by Speed (secondary stat): Shield Bash, Spirits Within, Circle of Scorn, Requiescat.
Now starts automatically in Shield Oath. By default, Shield Oath and Sword Oath now share a hotbar slot. Adding Sword Oath to your bar in addition to the Shield/Sword shared slot will nullify the pairing until one or the other is removed. Adding Sword Oath over the current slot will reverse the default behavior, causing you to instead start in Sword Oath.
Requiescat no longer requires your MP to be above 80% to generate its effect.
Passage of Arms’ check for movement (via turning) has been slightly delayed to make it more forgiving.
Divine Veil now functions like Shake it Off--instant and augmentable, starting from 10% HP.
Spirits Within now also heals based on missing %HP, at 2 potency per missing %HP to a maximum of 600 potency at 1 HP.
Shield Oath and Sword Oath have each been changed into an ability-weaponskill with a GCD-length triggered GCD recast time, similarly to the Heavensward version of Empyreal Arrow, allowing each to be woven into a half-GCD. Shield Oath can be toggled off without triggering the global cooldown. Mana costs of each reduced to 480.

Warrior

Damage or healing of certain abilities now affected by Speed (secondary stat): Onslaught, Upheaval, Equilibrium.
Now starts automatically in Defiance. By default, Defiance and Deliverance now share a hotbar slot. Adding Deliverance to your bar in addition to the Defiance/Deliverance shared slot will nullify the pairing until one or the other is removed. Adding Deliverance over the current slot will reverse the default behavior, causing you to instead start in Deliverance.
Defiance now affects all healing received from both spells and abilities. This still does not affect healing generated, such as Equilibrium's own healing or that of Steel Cyclone or Inner Beast, allowing them to be tuned more obviously and directly.
Defiance now grants 25% maximum HP, up from 20%, providing equal eHP to other tank stances.
Upheaval is now directly affected by your %HP, where % Maximum HP-increasing effects count the further percentage. For instance, being 100% HP in Defiance would count as 125% HP, and being 100% HP during Thrill of Battle + Defiance would count count as 150% HP, and each would affect Upheaval damage proportionately. (Previously Defiance dealt hidden additional potency in Defiance and its damage was not affected multiplicatively between Defiance and Thrill of Battle as the actual %HP would be. This thus has been corrected.)
Shake it Off returned to its previous version, though now able to end a number more status effects and now applies also to all allies within 8 yards. In its place, Thrill of Battle grants all allies within 25 yards additional maximum HP equal to half its HP generated for the Warrior itself.

Dark Knight

Damage of certain abilities now affected by Speed (secondary stat): Plunge, Dark Passenger, Salted Earth, Carve and Split.
Darkside will now be automatically automatically upon equipping the job stone, instancing, or reinstancing (from death in trials and 8-man raids). Its graphic can now also be turned off completely or when outside of combat via /darksidehide and /darksidecombat respectively.
Grit MP cost reduced to 800. Once Grit has activated, the Grit button is now replaced with an Aura-cancel for the Grit effect. This can be triggered to cancel Grit at any time, even mid-animation, rather than being available only when the GCD is ready and outside of animation lock (which previously effectively prevented oGCD-queuing).

Role Actions

Protect replaced with Veil. Veil – 120-second recast. Places a barrier upon the target party member or pet which nullifies the next cleansable detrimental effect or preventable knockback they would otherwise suffer. (Note, does not work against the winds in O9S, even though Arm's Length, Surecast, and Inner Release do. Similar potential means of external knockback prevention that could kill their target (i.e. griefing) are likewise affected.)
Rescue cooldown decreased from 150 to 120 seconds.
Rescue’s movement speed and the speed by which targets affected may again be treated as stationary, unless manually resuming movement, has been hastened.

**Shurrikhan** · 11-15-2018 11:12 PM

Edits and Additions to the Above:

Added a [Tentative] segment to each of Dragoon, Bard, and Machinist, to describe changes in the event that Disembowel (or any Piercing debuff) no longer applied to anyone but Dragoons.
Corrected wording of Dualcast change.
Clarified changes to SMN pet actions.
Clarified that Direct Hit and Critical Hit no longer receive raid-buff synergy except to/from each other, in a far, far more limited fashion.
Underlined resource scaling changes for emphasis. (TP and MP received per player GCD at 20% less per tick to compensate.)
Clarified the effect of the Speed stat on particular abilities per job.
Revised the adjustment to Wanderer's Minuet and the Bloodletter -> Pitch Perfect stacked hotkey function to as nearly as possible maintain balance despite the change towards symmetry and reduced bloat.
Added an enmity reduction component each to Raging Strikes (now Hawkeye) and Wildfire.
Readded a lost/forgotten addition to the General Changes - Mechanical and Miscellaneous Changes area: Refreshing or replacing a given buff or debuff with the same will now cause the square root of the previous application's remaining duration to be added to the replacing/refreshing buff or debuff.
Monk: Further Form Shift QoL changes. Chakra maximum increased (when in combat). TFC now consumes 1-7 Chakra for 50 potency-per-chakra.
Bard: Mage's Ballad and Army's Paeon buffed.

Responses with relevant insight into the shortlist:

@ Mansion -- last edit Nov. 15, 2:50 PM PST

Originally Posted by Mansion

I really like your ideas actually, especially the way you'd give viability to Spell/Skill Speed.
My two cents on the classes I main :

RDM
Dualcast not fading when you go into melee combo : that would be OP. Most of the time if you go 80/80 and have a dualcast, you want to use it to disbalance you mana and get a guaranteed proc on your verflare/verholy. While having a full combo, verholy/flare and verThunder/Aero all this squeezed in your best moments of Embolden... it's too much. And most of the time, you will be using the GCD of that second spell to move into melee range (by corps à corps or regular movement). A dualcast is never lost in that situation.

This was a description error on my part. Dualcast will not be lost upon sprinting, potting, using duty actions, or beginning to mount or teleport, etc., but will still be lost upon beginning melee combo. Thank you for pointing it out.

As an abstract addition, I'd love something to get Mana regen (as a bulk or a progressive ticking regen I don't mind), in the RDM kit. Maybe part of Embolden or something... And avoid the chain rez by making rez more expensive for RDM somehow I guess.

I'd been working on this, but my idea wasn't quite ready for inclusion. I had intended to reduce all mana costs except Verraise by roughly a sixth while decreasing maximum mana by a lesser amount, but I liked the uniquely clean base mana percentiles it already had (i.e. 2.5% on Jolt/Verstone/Verfire). Whether a tack-on effect would work most cleanly within Manafication, the revised Impulse mechanic, or the like seemed a bit too arbitrary for the moment, so I'd not yet included it. I'm leaning towards Impulse, causing each stack to essentially generate 1% base mana, in symmetry with the +1 Black/White mana per stack. This will likely be added in within a couple days.

SMN
I'd actually hope that each pet actions can be weaved as oGCD, and not clumsily queued in that little Carbuncle's stubborn AI.

A mixture of accidental omission and excess complexity for a perfect solution, at least for a shortlist. You'll find that oGCD actions are now by default bar-equipped and pet-adaptive in the SCH description. I've been working to allow for a perfectly reactive pet since ARR without requiring simulcasting (which we will likely never see for engine or design philosophy reasons) or making all pet actions cast-less abilities without a compensatory need for time spent stationary or stutter-casting, but within those restrictions a proper solution can be complex to explain, most nearly analogous with the old Stamina bar of 1.x that depends on stationary time.

BRD
I'd add an aggro dump on that action that makes you jump back. Bards would be thankful.

I'd not included it simply because I nostalgize over a time when kiting was a real thing and I'd run leveling dungeons with 4 Bards. I'm most considering integrating into Battle Voice a way of distributing half of the Bard's enmity to all other party members instead, or similar; they are the voice but the party is their face, so to speak.

@HyoMin -- last edit Nov. 15, 9:30 PM PST

Originally Posted by HyoMinPark

Could I have some elaboration on this? Are you referring to Skill Speed affecting the damage of these abilities? Or are you referring to Skill Speed affecting the cooldown durations of these abilities? Or the proc rate like Critical Hit does now for PP, Bloodletter, and RoD? Or something else entirely?

Sorry. The elaboration was listed only in the General Changes section, where Skill Speed and Spell Speed were combined into Speed and revised. I will reword that and each similar description slightly to make it clear that it affects only damage.

I’d rather find another button to share a slot with PP, because you can still use Bloodletter during Minuet (you can get at least 2 off during it, maybe 3 if you time it perfectly—you want Bloodletter on cooldown regardless before you enter Mage’s Ballad so as to not waste a proc, assuming you would still want BRD to proc based on a substat, be it Crit or SkSpeed/“Speed” or even a flat percentage rate). I’d rather see the Minuet button change into PP, since the ability is only available during Minuet. Instead of taking away another oGCD during that window.

Yes, the change would be nerf to Bard, and slightly more so than I intended. I hadn't finalized the wording. Please see if the new version (which I will post momentarily) is up to snuff, balance-wise. I've removed Pitch Perfect's own cooldown in favor of a "ghosted" cooldown, which cycles every 15 seconds, adding a stack to Repertoire. Swapping into WM with BL/RoD at the ready will convert them to Repertoire.

This would obviously need to also change to be in line with my above preference. Assuming an ability like this was added. Maybe it could replace Misery’s End? Since that ability is only active at the last 20% of a boss’/mob’s HP?

I intended it to be the WM equivalent of RoD, less effective than WM at low amounts and greater at high amounts. I'd prefer to offer it more uniqueness, perhaps by making Pitch Perfect a line AoE that deals full damage only to the main target and making Dissonance a mass-DoT, but I've not come up with anything beyond simple choice-matching just yet.

I’d personally rather see Refresh and Tactician lose their enmity dump, and see BRD (and MCH) receive Diversion instead. Especially since every other DPS job has access to it (and it was originally Quelling Strikes—a BRD skill!). Tying aggro management to a support skill is not something that I’ve ever liked, as I have ended up using Tactician to reduce aggro, and then not had it available when it was actually needed for TP regen.

I was hasty in including that particular solution. However, as every role is currently allowed 10 and only 10 role actions, I am hesitant to attempt to break that rule except as a last resort.

Plus, the aggro reduction has proven to not make much of a difference in my experience, since a lot of my aggro problems come after a really good opener, and even after hitting Tactician at various intervals (from 25 seconds to 30 seconds to even 60 seconds), I’ve still climbed right back to the #2 spot on aggro within my next song rotation. This week in O9S, I actually had to use it in the middle of my opener because I got super lucky with PPs and a Barrage+RA, and spent the next 2 1/2 minutes sitting at the #2 spot. Kind of scary. If the cooldown was shorter, it probably wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but I still disagree with the overall notion of tying aggro management to abilities that should be used as party resource support.

Agreed. We need a Diversion-like solution for the time being. What are we willing to give up for it, though? I am loath to give up Peloton, and losing Palisade would be a massive utility loss, yet any other choice seems, by way of symmetry, even more harmful.

A better change would be for Repelling Shot to halve enmity like Elusive Jump does, on the same cooldown duration as Elusive (30s) if the developers insist on not giving BRD/MCH Diversion (like every other DPS job). And I would love a fix the animation so that it will not clip your next GCD, but I guess that’s not entirely necessary, since Elusive can also clip/make you lose uptime. Otherwise, delete it. The ability as it is now is completely useless, and most BRD mains I’ve spoken to don’t even have it on their hotbar.

I'm personally more fine with it being situational and left off many a Bard's bars than I am with it being obligatory, as it still wouldn't really suit it's situation. Gap-makers are for controlling attention more so than undoing it, and by the time there'd be a visible (beyond enmity bars) use for the aggro-dump, your life would already be threatened in using it. It then becomes either redundant, or the equivalent of a key locked in the chest it unlocks. At least with a 12 yalm range and greater reactivity, it could be worth the oGCD when needing to get away from a fool or stunned ally marked for an AoE.

[Spitball warning] Repelling Shot was gutted with the gutting, rather than fixing, of "Bow Mage", but if a pseudo-cast full draw option were still available to Bard gameplay, I would have loved to double down on this concept by turning into a variable skill that could take, but did not require, a target. If no target were presented, you'd leave a repel point around which you could rapidly return to or switch from one side of to the other. Reactivation moves you about the pinion, pulling you to it and then rapidly accelerating manual movement in a unique animation with additional momentum. If a target were presented, then you would harpoon the enemy with a connected shot then pinning them to the ground through their foot; even once having freed their foot after the very brief bind fades, they'd be leashed to you through the pinion as if via a pulley, allowing you to manipulate the target's movement as if with a tether movement-restricting mechanic that loses HP over movement, but would only break quickly if both parties moved away from each other. Reactivation will attempt to draw the target towards the pulley if moving away or bound you toward and past the target if moving toward it. All this being said, such mechanics would be far more suited to a Ranger than a Bard, if such were ever made.

I wouldn’t mind seeing instead a Trait Upgrade to Quick Nock at level 50 that upgrades it into Wide Volley. With a higher TP cost, it could come with a slightly higher potency as well. They could also consider making it an AOE combo, with Wide Volley comboing off of Quick Nock, but that’s not really necessary.

At present, I intend only to offer increased range with increased TP cost, identical to in Heavensward. For maximal efficiency, Quick Nock will still be used. It just doesn't require two keys to choose between them, as the range would have already decided for you before in practice and now in every way.

I’d like to see something happen with the Warden’s Paeon. It used to be a really good skill back in HW (with Berserk’s Pacification), but now it’s use is limited only to dungeons, or the rare 24-man or 8-man where debuffs are actually cleansable. I’ve wondered if making it a magical damage version of Palisade and making it a role skill would be better. Feels bad when I see Mustard Bomb coming in O11S and can’t help mitigate it (outside of Troubadour Minuet activation when it’s needed for other mechanics). It would also give BRD/MCH a more useful Role Skill, since almost half of ours are so situational they’ve proven to be useless at a higher level (i.e., the “___ Graze” skills—only Head Graze has been used in higher-end content, and for only 1 mechanic during Deltascape and Sigmascape).

Right now, I think we could have included the effects, or near enough to them, of Warden's Paeon, Palisade, and Nature's Minuet under a single key if not for the rigid manner in which the songs rotate. But such is a complex discussion for a different time. Replacing Warden's Paeon with Palisade would affect balance with Machinist in ways I'm not equipped to handle right now, even if it would happily open a slot for Diversion.

The Warden’s Paeon — Physical Ranged DPS role skill
Reduces magical damage taken by a party member by 20%.
Duration: 10s
Recast: 150s

For now, we are still bound by the 10 Role Actions per Role constraint. I'd like to see Role Actions removed entirely, but I'm trying to work within that constraint for the purposes of my suggestions here.

Something other than a Haste mechanic in Army’s Paeon would be nice as well. I dislike at high skill speeds clipping at 4-stack AP, and the Haste itself is only effective if 1.) you earn all of your stacks very early on during AP (within the first 2 DoT ticks), and 2.) if you allow AP to run its full duration (30s), which BRDs currently do not do in a normal single-target scenario. And the gain is only 1~2 extra GCDs, if I’m remembering the theorycrafting discussion correctly.

Still working on this. Some of the clipping issues are to be remedied by the changes to Speed (formerly SkS/SpS), but I'm fully aware that the animation time scaling suggestion is the least realistic of the whole lot. I'm still trying to find an equilibrium between a clean tooltip and a functional solution.

I’ve always liked the idea of seeing AP activate Flaming Arrow on a target when its used, and Flaming Arrow being the mechanic of the song (especially since it’s used as one of the two main AOE songs currently in AOE situations). Flaming Arrow would end when AP is either clipped or the song itself ends. Potency of Flaming Arrow could be adjusted so that it’s not “too OP”, but it would give the song more potential than it currently has.

Given my love-hate relationship with fire arrow tropes this is perturbingly appealing to me, though I'd like for each song to be of both decent ST and AoE usefulness. Ideally, I'd like AP to be the perfect "setup" song, but that would require, again, a revision of the rigid song rotation system. For now I am considering lingering effects that can roll over into WM or MB, however, over one's you'd be reluctant to drop AP as a result of. I'd prefer it offer changes in gameplay and rotational opportunities over, even if slightly more functional, straight damage.

@ShinShimon -- last edited Nov. 15, 10:15 PST

Originally Posted by ShinShimon

I want Monk QoL to line up with other melee classes. Change buff/debuff/DoT lengths so that the ideal combo is a simple 111>222 (or 111>111>222) instead of an awkward staggered 111>222>112>221>112>222. Let us max Greased Lightning instantly, without relying on a 1-minute cooldown and 3 GCDs; make it last up to 30 seconds; in general, make it as easy to maintain as Blood of the Dragon. Remove the randomness on filling chakras. Remove the fists system, give us 5% more base damage, bake in Wind Tackle/Riddle of Wind, make Riddle of Fire not slow you down.

I do not think every form of simplified gameplay is QoL. I consider, for instance, what you're suggesting to be fundamentally different from reducing what amounts, necessarily, to button bloat or traps of zero merit. I believe the structure of Monk's buffs and debuffs, and the rotation that results from it, to be of gameplay benefit to the job, and I would be loathe to remove what little nuance and complexity it was allowed to retain relative to Heavensward. I consider Perfect Balance iconic, and expect that you'd see a more dully rigid rotation if all three stacks of GL were granted instantly; I've tried to avoid overbuffing Tornado Kick to the point that it'd be obligatory per 30 seconds, but such a change would amount to exactly that. If such became the sole purpose of Perfect Balance, moreover, you would decimate Monk burst AoE and hamper its versatility. Letting Greased Lightning last 30 seconds would remove the entire point of the combination of Riddle of Earth, Form Shift, and current Riddle of Wind (now, Wind Tackle).

You are essentially asking that I remove everything that makes me main Monk -- and in a shortlist concerned solely with actual QoL and job balance, at that.

In typing this I did notice, however, that I'd missed another detail from the General Changes category that should have been included, which would improve Monk QoL indirectly, especially in regard to Demolish, and would better allow for what the Speed changes promised to apply to the job. It is now added and underlined at the section's top.

@Grimoire -- last editted Nov. 16, 8:23 PST. (Previously accidentally held within another box. My apologies.)

Originally Posted by Grimoire-M

I got it from reading it tbh. You still don't want to drop Enochian and go into the ARR rotation again, but going into ice early isn't as much of a penalty, not using B4 isn't as much of a penalty, and the increased fluidity of ice phase does increase your average DPS. Scathe does see use too still, though I wish they'd gone with letting it proc thundercloud/firestarter. I welcome the idea, just not the final dps numbers. I'd probably start at 30% for AF1 and add 20% for each stack thereafter, but that I think is a boost over the current dps rate. [1] The MP value changes are nice but do very little when you factor in that the next expansion is going to break all of them all over again anyways.

[2] The bigger problem to me imo is that Mana Shift got a meaningless 'buff' that only affects SMN and Refresh still wasn't nerfed. [3] And all of the casters other than SMN got nerfed, and [4] SMN's issues were just glossed over. The Sic change does nothing. [5] Getting melee combos 6% faster, pushing RDM to use their oGCDs more for a minimal amount of gain and retuning Embolden to be backloaded instead of frontloaded is not gonna make up for losing all of that base damage either. Putting all of that focus on their spike window is not going to help them when they're not guaranteed to see it at specific times. They get one more GCD to flex for it. Big whoop.

And nothing changed about the actual problems with BRD. [6] Equalizing the dps stats doesn't change that there are crit rate raid buffs and that piercing still exists, boosting crit for BRD just becomes flat out 20% better for them relative to everything else, and around 5% better for MNK, with no actual consideration for secondary stats being put in for the majority of DPS classes, beyond dump Speed. [7] Speed is still the worst stat too. It does nothing to help with base resource management or positively affect rotation timing for most classes and remains doubly worse for healers trying to time pre-casts. Good job. You did it. Nothing changed. [8] BRD and MCH also got a pointless AoE weaponskill range boost, because 'that's what they needed. Bard even got a giant AoE buff in Minuet! The QoL on Flamethrower/Rapidfire and AoE effect on Wildfire on MCH helps but [9] does nothing to close the pre-existing rDPS or skill gap there either. [10] That's a far bigger atrocity when it comes to ranged/caster dps balance at the moment. What gives?

The only way some of this 'might' be saved is with the right 5.0 boosts, but even that is a long stretch. None of this would help the current situation, at all.

I do not mean to disregard your opinions, but I want to be sure the complaints were made with full awareness of the places meant to address them. I've since underlined each in the above posts.

The exact MP will vary, but the %base MP will not. At present, many BLM spells almost to follow irrational (in the technical sense) number, as if they were originally set to a different product of factors or with inclusion of Piety effect on casters and have been gradually nudged to the arbitrary and convoluted fractions we see now. So long as the next product given for maximum MP maintains the same involved primes, the smoothed numbers and more sensible %MP counts should remain smooth in 5.x.
Mana Shift has been buffed to anyone whom previously had a lower maximum MP than their target, e.g. from any caster onto a healer (or, say, a RDM onto a SMN/BLM), up to some additional 30% MP generation. This acts the more obvious 25% reduction in recast time, from 120s to 90s. The primary purpose of these buffs is towards providing a substitute for Refresh. Admittedly, Refresh itself maintains its previous power in this regard, but it has at least lost some double-Ranged value despite MCH being an equal recipient to its benefits.
The nerfs to BLM would only be present in the most perfect of fight circumstances. In all others, it was a buff. The changes to RDM are, on the whole, a total (rDPS + pDPS) buff. Note also that SMN lost, in exchange for its QoL changes and greater pet reactiveness, the bug-gimmick of extra Wyrmwaves via cross-class skills.
Which SMN issues have I glossed over, if you may be specific? I will correct what I can without creating further issues in the process.
I must say, I doubt that. RDM was not a low total DPS job even before 4.4 buffs. These are a huge boon to its rDPS. I pulled back on a couple of the potency reversions (namely melee-flare combo), but I honestly worry I may have to come back to it and nerf them again in order not to make RDM the dominant tDPS when played well. I will likely have to undo what I've undone.
The Corps-a-corps and Displacement changes were made not to force greater apm, but simply to compensate for the increased flexibility (and with it, average frequency) of the melee combo. Perhaps you'd prefer that the melee combo itself accelerated the cooldown timers in order to ensure their alignment?
The added flexibility should be up into the order of 40 seconds in what would otherwise have been ill-timed generation as forced by downtime, and several GCDs when taken in combination with Impulse and the melee combo B/W Mana cost reduction, not merely a single GCD.
This was addressed directly in a manner following what curtailed Skill Speed back when Selene's Spell Speed / Skill Speed (rather than flat Attack Speed) buffs would otherwise have made it overpowered, provided enough TP inflow. The greater your pre-stat Crit chance/bonus percentile, the less each stat point is worth, such that it equals the same damage increase regardless of raid buffs. I've since underlined this segment.
Speed has particular breakpoints beyond the recommended rotational minimum at which is sees notable and sudden gains in value, especially among Monk, Samurai, Ninja, Dark Knight, Warrior, and Black Mage. On the whole, I believe this is enough to make Speed the most lucrative stat up to certain points, until again one can afford to make the next jump, on a job-by-job basis, while leaving its inherent penalty as small as possible between those points. If I were to, even after increasing ability damage, remove all breakpoints at which its gains are, for a span, less rewarding due to rotational bottlenecks like Life Surge, Hagakure, Wind Tackle, Reload, Quick Reload, and the like, I would doubtlessly make Speed by far the most powerful secondary stat. Worse yet, unless I was willing to desync indirect potency tools like the above from buffs which Speed already improves upon like Raging Strikes, Ley Lines, Riddle of Fire, Dreadwyrm Trance, and the like, I would face both rewarding those durationed buffs doubly (increased frequency and the normal increased value) and would end up with a job who, at high Speed, is desynced from the rest of his or her party. Such would encourage parties to enforce a particular speed rate upon each of their members to ensure raid (de)buff alignment. Put simply, I have considered these issues you mention, but found directly addressing them at the cost of other factors to create a worse overall experience. Such is how I arrived at the compromise I've suggested.

Additionally, as TP/MP scale with the GCD, Speed would indeed compensate for its own added TP/MP troubles (previously inefficiencies) proportionately.
Dissonance was indeed an overbuff considering the decreased Repertoire waste in Wanderer's Minuet. I've since tuned it back overnight since the original post. I'm under no impression that Grenado Shot or Wide Volley are strictly "needed". However, I don't feel that their removal was at all needed either. The reason given at the time was button bloat, but the game has since introduced key stacking, nullifying that reason.
True, but, should I be seeking to decrease skill gap? It seems like every other good MCH's reason for maining MCH is that they can play it well when so few others can. I'd prefer to see changes of a much larger and more fundamental scale in 5.x, but for now such changes would be more controversial than appreciated, I fear.
Skill gap is, specifically? MCH may have warrant for such a claim, but in five years of daily forum lurking I've only once heard it opined that the ranged and caster roles are divided thematically or practically by their skill required. I will take it under consideration, but, again, it seems out of scope for a balance/QoL thread in mid-expansion. Wide Volley, Grenado Shot, the BLM MP changes, etc., may seem or even be superfluous, but they are also very, very simple to implement. A numbers change to make a significant influence on MCH skillgap may be similarly simple, code-wise, but I lack the expertise on my own to craft it, while the more fundamental changes I have confidence in the success of, if introduced, would not be so simple.

**Shurrikhan** · 11-15-2018 11:35 PM

Final Notes

Remaining Issues:

[Dependency] Bard and MCH still dependent on DRG. DRG still dependent on double-ranged for a leading total (personal + indirect) DPS. (I recommend viewing xivrdps.com in regard to this and the Balance bullet-points.)
[Balance] NIN remains one of the lowest total (personal + indirect) damage contributors in optimized speed-comps. It is popular, but much weaker than as is commonly held, and typically outperformed by a substantial margin by BLMs or SMNs (when another caster is also present), and noticeably by Bards, Dragoons (with even just one ranged and one nuker or two ranged), and Monks (in high-physical comps). With the absence of meaningful threat resets or adds, tank relative enmity creep makes calculating for this more straightforward than was once the case. Ninja may actually deserve a tiny, tiny buff.
[Balance] Bard, perhaps the most consistent lead total DPS contributor apart from SMN in a dual-caster comp or a particularly good BLM in its ideal fights, is now even more OP with the improvements to Army's Paeon and Mage's Ballad to balance them against Wanderer's Minuet. A little under a 1% nerf would be most appropriate if any only if freed from Dragoon, but I'd not like to theorize the correction this at such a small gap without practical data.
[Balance] Further MCH buffs may also be necessary. Freedom from Dragoon for both ranged piercing classes may also be necessary.
[Stylistic] SMN gameplay is just as hit-or-miss as before. I've only smoothed out pet responsiveness and applied minor QoL fixes. I do not suspect I will go any further though, as I do not intend to change working gameplay, only to make the means by which that gameplay is provided more cohesive and attractive.
[Stylistic] MCH gameplay still "clunky" and punishing, though slightly less so than before. Heat changes may yet follow.

**Mansion** · 11-16-2018 12:39 AM

I really like your ideas actually, especially the way you'd give viability to Spell/Skill Speed.
My two cents on the classes I main :

RDM
Dualcast not fading when you go into melee combo : that would be OP. Most of the time if you go 80/80 and have a dualcast, you want to use it to disbalance you mana and get a guaranteed proc on your verflare/verholy. While having a full combo, verholy/flare and verThunder/Aero all this squeezed in your best moments of Embolden... it's too much. And most of the time, you will be using the GCD of that second spell to move into melee range (by corps à corps or regular movement). A dualcast is never lost in that situation.
I like your idea of progressive Embolden, makes so much more sense to burst to have something going up rather than the other way around.
As an abstract addition, I'd love something to get Mana regen (as a bulk or a progressive ticking regen I don't mind), in the RDM kit. Maybe part of Embolden or something... And avoid the chain rez by making rez more expensive for RDM somehow I guess.

SMN
I'd actually hope that each pet actions can be weaved as oGCD, and not clumsily queued in that little Carbuncle's stubborn AI.

BRD
I'd add an aggro dump on that action that makes you jump back. Bards would be thankful.

**MoroMurasaki** · 11-16-2018 01:26 AM

Originally Posted by Mansion

BRD
I'd add an aggro dump on that action that makes you jump back. Bards would be thankful.

Haven't read much else yet but BRDs would much prefer an enmity queller akin to Diversion than another dump ability. Something is better than nothing of course but if beggars can be choosers.

**Exiled_Tonberry** · 11-16-2018 02:12 AM

A lot of that Monk QoL really needs to happen. Seriously, why can you still be out of all fist stances?

AST being able to heal outside of sects is silly too, why would you not default them to one? It just leaves room for silly mistakes, or even worse, players who don't care and will just heal outside of sects the entire time.

**Kabooa** · 11-16-2018 05:04 AM

Alright, so. Black Mage

All that MP fanangling is unneeded with just the "Independent UI tick".

UI/AF 3 do not reduce the GCD, only the cast time. The .625 Second deadzone between phase transitions would mean there's no risk of an MP deadzone.

Making the ice spells better at the expense of making F4 worse is horrible. We minimize Ice spells heavily. We only ever cast the one in UI: B4. Increasing B3's potency is an empty gesture beyond the very first cast. You have listed no changes regarding the damage reduction of Fire and Ice.

In the case that it is removed: We aren't suddenly going to use ice spells. There is no difference in time or cost between the two in spell tiers. Given the choice, we want to cast fire. Fire's bonus would have to be completely removed or reduced to the point of nullification to make it something to consider. Ice and Fire have the same exact cost regarding mobility, so given the choice you never choose Ice.

In the case that it stays: ^^^^^^^ Double down.

I will never use Scathe, stop trying to make me!

Phase lengths look exactly the same. 7 GCDs + FS in fire, 6-9 seconds in Ice.

Black mage turret is reduced for no concrete gain.

The UI tick does, however, make Spellspeed a 100% damage gain compared to now though, where it doesn't influence your UI phase at all. It is possible the UI tick will reduce Ice phase further which means more Fire uptime.

**Shurrikhan** · 11-16-2018 07:51 AM

Originally Posted by MoroMurasaki

Haven't read much else yet but BRDs would much prefer an enmity queller akin to Diversion than another dump ability. Something is better than nothing of course but if beggars can be choosers.

I'd wanted to add something, but didn't want to include any ideas I hadn't yet finalized. Could I ask for your advice on an apt recipient for the effect?

I'd personally rather not bake it in passively as AST enmity reduction was with Sects.

Well, honestly, I'd rather change the way enmity works, giving all but tanks a portion of their enmity as "loose enmity" which tanks can then "steal" with their own, so that Diversion is unnecessary and tank enmity scales with their party -- rather than suffering increasingly from the AP growth gap outside of crafted-BiS tiers -- but I digress.

**Grimoire-M** · 11-16-2018 08:35 AM

Originally Posted by Kabooa

-snip-

I got it from reading it tbh. You still don't want to drop Enochian and go into the ARR rotation again, but going into ice early isn't as much of a penalty, not using B4 isn't as much of a penalty, and the increased fluidity of ice phase does increase your average DPS. Scathe does see use too still, though I wish they'd gone with letting it proc thundercloud/firestarter. I welcome the idea, just not the final dps numbers. I'd probably start at 30% for AF1 and add 20% for each stack thereafter, but that I think is a boost over the current dps rate. The MP value changes are nice but do very little when you factor in that the next expansion is going to break all of them all over again anyways.

The bigger problem to me imo is that Mana Shift got a meaningless 'buff' that only affects SMN and Refresh still wasn't nerfed. And all of the casters other than SMN got nerfed, and SMN's issues were just glossed over. The Sic change does nothing. Getting melee combos 6% faster, pushing RDM to use their oGCDs more for a minimal amount of gain and retuning Embolden to be backloaded instead of frontloaded is not gonna make up for losing all of that base damage either. Putting all of that focus on their spike window is not going to help them when they're not guaranteed to see it at specific times. They get one more GCD to flex for it. Big whoop.

And nothing changed about the actual problems with BRD. Equalizing the dps stats doesn't change that there are crit rate raid buffs and that piercing still exists, boosting crit for BRD just becomes flat out 20% better for them relative to everything else, and around 5% better for MNK, with no actual consideration for secondary stats being put in for the majority of DPS classes, beyond dump Speed. Speed is still the worst stat too. It does nothing to help with base resource management or positively affect rotation timing for most classes and remains doubly worse for healers trying to time pre-casts. Good job. You did it. Nothing changed. BRD and MCH also got a pointless AoE weaponskill range boost, because 'that's what they needed. Bard even got a giant AoE buff in Minuet! The QoL on Flamethrower/Rapidfire and AoE effect on Wildfire on MCH helps but does nothing to close the pre-existing rDPS or skill gap there either. That's a far bigger atrocity when it comes to ranged/caster dps balance at the moment. What gives?

The only way some of this 'might' be saved is with the right 5.0 boosts, but even that is a long stretch. None of this would help the current situation, at all.

**MoroMurasaki** · 11-16-2018 08:52 AM

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

I'd wanted to add something, but didn't want to include any ideas I hadn't yet finalized. Could I ask for your advice on an apt recipient for the effect?

I'd personally rather not bake it in passively as AST enmity reduction was with Sects.

Well, honestly, I'd rather change the way enmity works, giving all but tanks a portion of their enmity as "loose enmity" which tanks can then "steal" with their own, so that Diversion is unnecessary and tank enmity scales with their party -- rather than suffering increasingly from the AP growth gap outside of crafted-BiS tiers -- but I digress.

I admit I don't fully understand the premise but I'll try to paraphrase as best I can and give my thoughts and you can tell me if I am way off base.

Everyone is doing their opening burst and generating 90% of that enmity themselves but then the remaining 10% that would be generated (numbers here purely for example) could be taken by the tanks with some sort of ability and thus a MT would have his own enmity generation and then have 10% of everyone else's as well? Sort of like everyone casting a weak Shadewalker all the time?

I feel like while this might eliminate Diversion as a skill it just puts all the responsibility for enmity management on the tanks which frankly seems like it's letting the rest of the party off easy. Plus I would assume this skill would be a dps loss in some capacity as most enmity generators are which then leaves us with the additional issue of tanks not wanting to take any more enmity than they need to. As a dps that sometimes creeps up aggro tables at the wrong time (and a part time WHM who does so seemingly all the time) I would say this is asking for trouble, specifically with situations where you have less skilled tanks who don't know how to hold threat.

Right now if I actually use Lucid on CD I won't pull off of a tank in single target and I do respectable damage as a RDM, assuming I was able to Diversion for my opener. Leaving that management up to tanks would likely see me tanking a lot more dungeon and normal raid bosses than I would like to.

I don't know. Perhaps I've misunderstood your intent but to me this sounds like something that would make tanks lives harder which isn't what we need, or it would be overturned and trivialize enmity management even more than it already is. I agree enmity as a whole could use a fresh coat of paint but I just don't know if this is that paint, I'd like to continue to see the responsibility shared over the entire party as to mimic the rest of the potential responsibilities like mitigation and dealing damage.

Thread: A QoL/Balance Shortlist for DPS (Tanks/Healers only as additional context)

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A QoL/Balance Shortlist for DPS (Tanks/Healers only as additional context)

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