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

[Shurrikhan]

So, question. Do you play machinist at all? Or did you speak to any MCH when you wrote the QoL changes you'd like to see for them? Because this doesn't sound like any of the QoL changes MCH's have been pleading to get for the entire expansion.. or perhaps I'm misunderstanding what you wrote.

There are a handful of issues that have come up most when I've asked other Machinists about the job's design issues:

1. The job has notable button bloat, even including outright pointless buttons (e.g. Gauss Barrel).
2. Ranged DPS depend too greatly on their threat dumps during openers, and a percentile threat reduction would be preferred anyways.
3. Bard almost always trumps MCH as the ranged of choice when only one is taken. When two are taken, MCH always has the inferior maximum total DPS.
4. Skill Speed is shit, especially during Rapid Fire.
5. Flamethrower is bugged, clunky, and generally undertuned.
6. MCH AoE is low and weirdly finicky/immobile, especially compared to BRD's, outside of fights short enough to take BT-HC into BOD or immediately BOD.
7. Wildfire can be a bitch, especially around boss jumps/invulns.
8. For all its eccentricities, Machinist lacks... pizzazz. It needs a little something more special.
9. The heat mechanic feels more punishing than rewarding.

As per my notes below, I've found no solution as of yet for that last issue. I am still working on how, exactly, I think Heat should work to maintain tacticality and encourage forethought with minimal sense of "punishment". The others issues at least been mitigated.

If there are further MCH issues you can point out, please do. I can only go off my own experience here, those of the dozen or so MCHs I've spoken at any real length with, and those of forum posts here.

I doubt you've misread any of it, but there is a great deal of context in the general section that may be pertinent to the suggested MCH changes. I can give a run-down of why I've suggested what I have, but let me clear -- though the changes will not be complete until that last issue is solved, I do think each of those changes has a very real place. The Wildfire siphon, for instance, augments enmity mitigation, AoE, and "something special". Moving AoE slightly from Bishop to Split Shot reduces maximal AoE burst -- or, if not for Hypercharge now being able to affect it -- but increases the flexibility of sustained AoE and of focus targeting. Grenado Shot, alone, is something of a guilty pleasure; I saw no reason ranged AoE (Wide Volley and Grenado Shot) should have been removed from ranged classes, especially given that we now have access to auto-swapped actions.

[Siccoroa]

Your Bard changes are pretty garbage to be honest. They do absolutely nothing to address the issues with Bard game play.


Crit is still the only stat worth bringing. It doesn't matter how much you buff speed if crit is still the only way to get procs.

The songs are still imbalanced, if anything it might be worse with these changes. You will still be trying to get out of armies paeon as soon as possible.

The battle voice/for req change means it will only be used during mages ballad and wanderers minuet. Once again making armies paeon the least useful song.

The button bloat is due to all the support skills, you should be pruning those before nerfing and pruning dps.

Other changes are good though, I really like the raging strikes change.

[Cetonis]

It's fine for songs to be imbalanced, honestly. There's really very little wrong with Bard itself -

:: SkS being a weak stat is largely universal and a separate topic. They shouldn't try to address it with a bunch of job-by-job hamfists.

:: The matter of piercing / crit buff is another broader design problem. In and of itself, having a crit-focused job is not a problem, it's a feature.

:: Button bloat is also largely universal, and will likely be addressed via role skill changes first and foremost.


Bard is the biggest "ain't broke, don't fix" job in the game right now. Relative to current Bard, the only mostly-QoL things that come to mind are -

:: Make Pitch Perfect cooldown 1s

:: Make Straighter Shot upgrade to a buff that only activates Refulgent, such that it's not consumed if you want to use SS (a blessing and a curse, but one less annoyance). Or make Refulgent re-apply / replace SS, but SE would have just done that in the first place if they were going to.


Then for future things, I'd expect little in the way of messing with core song mechanics. At most, maybe do the oft-tossed-around idea where AP stacks increase your RA proc rate by 5% each or something (this would make 4-stack AP slightly stronger than MB).

Instead, I imagine we'll finally get the regen song (consumes MP like Foe, thus near-useless in 8-mans, but hey folk want it) and probably a little more focus on MP management otherwise. Like it'd be kinda neat to have a skill that procs or gets stronger or something when you're at low MP or empty your MP or something. Then some sort of blatant "this is meant to increase Bard pps to keep up with other jobs' gains" button/trait and call it a day.

[Shurrikhan]

Your Bard changes are pretty garbage to be honest. They do absolutely nothing to address the issues with Bard game play.

Crit is still the only stat worth bringing. It doesn't matter how much you buff speed if crit is still the only way to get procs.

I don't honestly mind that Crit is a best stat. But, as we have two stats on every piece of gear, I did not find it okay to be hamstrung by whatever came with that Crit in BiS (or what would otherwise be BiS) gear. I've no intent of making (Skill) Speed better than Critical Hit; I just want to make the gap negligible and reduce the rampant scaling issues of Crit/DHit in BL-CS-BV compositions.

Under the suggested version, Speed would slightly outperform Determination and would outperform Direct Hit except at high (e.g. 2600+) DH + Crit stat totals, though by a tiny margin. Much of this hinges on AP's value, though. Critical Hit will remain king so long as Repertoire works as it does. If, however, I would to give all strikes' bonus damage a chance equal to its bonus multiplier to generate a stack of Repertoire, the stats' values would very nearly equalize except in mass-DoTing. If DoTs were to tick per snapshotted player GCD, Speed would be king. The first is a job-specific mechanical change, the second a universal, but in either case stat value could be turned on a dime. I've opted not to change Repertoire for now because I can remove the exponential component from any single stat, but not that stat's effects on others. Critical Hit can be rescaled with buffs recieved just as Skill Speed and Spell Speed have been with effects like Greased Lightning or Fey Wind or Ley Lines, just as I can taper Speed or Direct Hit value accordingly now, but I cannot remove the amount of extra Critical Hit and Direct Hit value Speed would give through its added rate, which would put me back at square one with rampant scaling, whereby a bottom-3 dps job is now a top-6, often outparsing same-percentile DRGs. So long as I want Bard to feel stat-synergetic I can't really afford that, so until I know just how much I have to compensate for, I fear I may have to stick with the version that leaves a larger Crit value gap for its more controllable output.

The songs are still imbalanced, if anything it might be worse with these changes. You will still be trying to get out of armies paeon as soon as possible.

You're right that Army's Paeon needs more, though I don't see why the songs would be even more imbalanced, save that Mage's no longer has as large a compensating imbalance in its AoE throughput.

WM ST dps has only been touched insofar as there is no longer a cooldown. Seeing as the cooldown was already no slower than the rate at which Repertoire can be generated outside of Empyreal Arrow, this buffs only mass-DoT gambles and the last two seconds of the song -- an almost purely QoL change. The buff to Mage's Ballad will likely rope only an additional couple shots per song if already high-Crit.

I don't much like the way Army's Paeon stacks work; they're slow to respond and have little potency value -- at most offering another 2 GCDs over AP's 30 seconds -- and lets none of that bonus linger into further songs. Those are the main things I'm working on now, with a focus on balance and symmetry. I'm sorry; originally I was only putting up those things I'd finished working on, but after the thread went barren for a month I just started posting the in-progress work on the front post for convenience. In the future I'll be sure to flag what's not yet finished. Bard changes in particular seem a hot topic, so I'll take more care with what goes up.

The battle voice/foe req change means it will only be used during mages ballad and wanderers minuet. Once again making armies paeon the least useful song.

I've of course been reconsidering the Battle Voice change too, but I actually expect the power levels will be far more balanced than you suggest, outside of Mage's Ballad probably being the weakest by a slight margin in most situations when healer throughput is not necessary, due to Critical Hit and Direct Hit no longer scaling at all exponentially with themselves, only each other. 4% Haste will tend to outperform 3% Damage outside of burst or DoT cleave, and vice versa. 6% Critical Hit comes out to about a 2.75% damage/healing throughput increase, making it the most useful only when there's healing to be dealt as well, but too close in throughput to overcap mana to avoid. I'm still not too sold on the Direct Hit portion, however, as it always seemed thematic to me that a Bard would be interested in both offensive and defensive/restorative throughput, and Direct Hit will only affect damage.

The button bloat is due to all the support skills, you should be pruning those before nerfing and pruning dps.

There's not a single nerf in these suggestions except to Monk's PB-RB spam and Fire IV spam (compensated for elsewhere to improve BLM breadth of usefulness without guaranteeing a top-2 tDPS spot in certain fights). Pruning, likewise, has only been through slot-swaps or consolidation of wholly redundant abilities (e.g. Doomspike->Sonic Thrust or, here, Battle Voice + Foe Requiem to offer more flexibility of rDPS contribution timings so that even if Refresh wasn't as needed, Ranged classes could still fit in any composition, and now without Bard needing to spend a GCD restarting its rDPS song -- a buff).

Other changes are good though, I really like the raging strikes change.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm still testing the epot values of a few other versions of AP. Ideally I'd like it to be entertaining as well, is the main thing, second only to balance.

It's fine for songs to be imbalanced, honestly. There's really very little wrong with Bard itself -

I agree that it's fine for songs to be a bit imbalanced, but not... unfun, if that makes sense? I hear from many Bards that AP is not only numerically shit, but unfun, for instance, and I'd like to fix both issues there. I disagree though that Bard feels already like a polished product; a lot of it feels just as jagged as Machinist to me.

:: SkS being a weak stat is largely universal and a separate topic. They shouldn't try to address it with a bunch of job-by-job hamfists.

On the chance that this is in reference to my own suggestions, everything here has been a universal change. The job-by-job mentions are merely to clarify that change (ability damage being affected by Speed via damage, unless already affected by Speed via rate as per Empyreal Arrow).

:: The matter of piercing / crit buff is another broader design problem. In and of itself, having a crit-focused job is not a problem, it's a feature.

I can't fully tell what you mean here. Could you clarify? Piercing / crit buff? Is that one thing or two separate issues? What is the "crit buff" problem?

I agree that having some RNG dependence on a job that can be adjusted with stats as to see progression in gameplay over time is a feature, though I do think the scaling issues that come with it can be a problem. I won't sacrifice the feature to curtail the problem, but I will mitigate what I can mitigate without having to sacrifice anything.

:: Button bloat is also largely universal, and will likely be addressed via role skill changes first and foremost.

I certainly hope so, though I still don't think that especially excuses having 4+ a plethora of mutually exclusive job-native skills each taking up a separate slot, either.

Bard is the biggest "ain't broke, don't fix" job in the game right now. Relative to current Bard, the only mostly-QoL things that come to mind are -

:: Make Pitch Perfect cooldown 1s

Agreed. And done.

:: Make Straighter Shot upgrade to a buff that only activates Refulgent, such that it's not consumed if you want to use SS (a blessing and a curse, but one less annoyance). Or make Refulgent re-apply / replace SS, but SE would have just done that in the first place if they were going to.

Agreed. And done.

Then for future things, I'd expect little in the way of messing with core song mechanics. At most, maybe do the oft-tossed-around idea where AP stacks increase your RA proc rate by 5% each or something (this would make 4-stack AP slightly stronger than MB).

An increase of 20% RA generation from HS, given that RA has exactly twice the damage of HS, would produce a 40% damage buff to HSs used over AP. AP can include up to 14 GCDs, with 1-2 spent on IJ, leaving you with 12-13 HSs. That would produce roughly 720 potency, less than two Pitch Perfect. A good WM will go 4-5 3-stack Perfect Pitch casts. That leaves us about 1000 potency short. That's better than what I've included so far for raw ST potency, but we still need more...

Instead, I imagine we'll finally get the regen song (consumes MP like Foe, thus near-useless in 8-mans, but hey folk want it) and probably a little more focus on MP management otherwise. Like it'd be kinda neat to have a skill that procs or gets stronger or something when you're at low MP or empty your MP or something. Then some sort of blatant "this is meant to increase Bard pps to keep up with other jobs' gains" button/trait and call it a day.

I mean, if the Regen Song lets you kick a WHM and solo-SCH/AST, then that could be pretty damn useful in 8-mans. But otherwise, yeah... Not sure why it'd be particularly desired unless we got a song-dependent point-support tool as well. And yeah, some MP management would be nice. Personally I'd love to see it as the system by which song choice is cycled, in place of the more rigid 80-second CDs, allowing us to dip in and out of each situationally, though at cost, with standard cycling slowly restoring mana and thereby leniency. But that is almost certainly just me... /shrug.

[Cetonis]

I agree that it's fine for songs to be a bit imbalanced, but not... unfun, if that makes sense? I hear from many Bards that AP is not only numerically shit, but unfun, for instance, and I'd like to fix both issues there. I disagree though that Bard feels already like a polished product; a lot of it feels just as jagged as Machinist to me.

Sure, individual mileage varies, but it's a pretty broad consensus that Bard design is in a good place right now, and it's one of the (or the) most popular jobs.

AP is 'downtime'. That's maybe not 'fun' in and of itself, but from a game design perspective it's not valueless to give players a breather from watching for procs and such. Players do shy away from 'high effort' jobs to some extent, and while I won't claim SE is being super cognizant of that in relation to AP, it is a thing.

Personally, I do think going-fast is fun enough, but AP doesn't quite get fast enough to feel it. Wouldn't mind 6% per stack or six stacks max or the like, the problem is that if a BRD actually built SkS a 24% redux would run into the soft barrier they seem to have where they don't want it to be readily possible to get the GCD much under 1.75s (save for Rapid Fire because /shrug). It'd be nice if they just made that a hard cap so that they could do more speed things imo.

I can't fully tell what you mean here. Could you clarify? Piercing / crit buff? Is that one thing or two separate issues? What is the "crit buff" problem?

The crit buff problem is this - so long as Bard generates an outsized benefit from certain party comps, relative to the benefit other jobs and namely Machinist get from party comps, Bard will always and forever be the 'meta' choice over Machinist if the jobs are correctly balanced.

If you're SE, you really can't and shouldn't seek to balance your game around one exact party comp. And SE very clearly doesn't; they make concessions here and there when the meta situation is hurting players' impression of a job, but by and large it's pretty apparent that SE balances with random JP raid finder groups in mind.

That's why we get silly statements like "if we gave BRD/MCH piercing they'd need to be nerfed". Because the notion that a DRG may or may not be present is actually part of how they tune numbers.

With respect to BRD vs. MCH, what this means is that SE is going to (and rightly should) tune BRD under the presumption that there may or may not be Litany, there may or may not be Chain, may or may not be Spears.

But if BRD is even with MCH on that metric, it will always pull ahead in a static 'meta' context, provided that crit comps remain optimal for speedkills (seems likely, as you want to maximize your high roll potential).

While this is of course produced by BRD being the way it is, it's moreso produced by Litany and Chain being what they are. Buffs that, aside from messing with the value of the crit substat, are no more interesting than straight damage buffs - save for what they do for MNK/BRD. If SE made those more plainly 'boring' damage buffs, balancing BRD vs. MCH with respect to meta would be much more plausible.

An increase of 20% RA generation from HS, given that RA has exactly twice the damage of HS, would produce a 40% damage buff to HSs used over AP. AP can include up to 14 GCDs, with 1-2 spent on IJ, leaving you with 12-13 HSs. That would produce roughly 720 potency, less than two Pitch Perfect. A good WM will go 4-5 3-stack Perfect Pitch casts. That leaves us about 1000 potency short. That's better than what I've included so far for raw ST potency, but we still need more...

I have no interest in making AP and MB equal WM. There's no reason to do that, having a 'burst' song is fine, preferable even (why have three songs if they're just different paint jobs for the same outcomes).
Making AP close to, or a little better than, MB does strike me as intriguing though, because MB would still have merits for AoE and for better leveraging running crit-buffed DoTs (assuming SE doesn't actually change much on the crit buff front, which seems like a safe guess).

I haven't the faintest clue where you get that 40% notion from - your average HS/RA gcd would go from 175p to 192.8p, so about a 10% boost. Ballad is worth ~26.67 pps at 38% crit; current AP is hard to calculate for reals due to the broader 80 vs 90 second context re: EA and BL, but just naively looking at autos and HS/RA would place it at about 27pps at max stacks. So a bit better than MB but mostly at early expac crit.

On the chance that this is in reference to my own suggestions, everything here has been a universal change. The job-by-job mentions are merely to clarify that change (ability damage being affected by Speed via damage, unless already affected by Speed via rate as per Empyreal Arrow).

Taking one job's section by itself, it looks like you're just arbitrarily adding SkS scaling to various skills. If there's a universal thing there it'd be better to just make that a separate point.

Though I think making SkS even more nonsensical isn't really the answer. The DoT/AA damage scaling is already hamfisted; I'd prefer some alternate solution.

The effort to make every substat desirable has largely just been an exercise in homogenization. DH, Det and Crit are simply math problems where you work out which one increases all of your damage by the most, plus a couple cases of job-specific factors with Crit (and WAR DH). SkS tries to be different but still ends up only being wanted when it increases near-all of a job's damage, at a rate akin to Det but self-scaling instead of diminishing.

I'd prefer that SE back off of this, and instead simply decide to be fine with having some stats being more or less wanted by different jobs. So long as each stat has its places to shine, none of them are truly awful, and there aren't any MCH situations where a substat threatens to break a job functionally.

Sure, this adds some dependence on available gear to job balance, but I think discussions of this vs. that piece are healthy on the whole. It's not bad to have players discussing and debating your game, or to have folk looking for community platforms to ask questions on etc. It leads to stories about 'did you see the numbers xyz got with their meme build'? None of this is bad.

And griefing over questionable substat selection has never been that big of a problem really. I don't think it warrants abandoning the positive elements that having more distinct substats can bring. Including also, they would be able to add third sets at base+10 or base+30 ilvls, without it being wholly disinteresting. And lack of reward options is certainly a real problem right now.

<crazy half-serious half-baked ideas follow>

In this vein, I think they could rework skill speed to affect auto-attack delay instead of damage (if it makes NIN want it, that's fine), and even also reduce cooldowns a la the old Spear. This would return it to something that matches its namesake, and could provide some interesting options for optimizing even on a fight by fight level (grab a SkS set if it makes cooldowns fit in that awkard phase timing etc).

I know they balance tankbusters and such around cooldown length, but realistically tankbusters haven't been scary in years, and if a PLD is stacking a substat to improve their defensive options, then great! SE has never been able to get folk to do that.

Then I'd turn to Direct Hit and delete it. Keep Direct Hits in the game, but make it a chance only accessible via skills like Battle Voice and Inner Release. Maybe swap Chain and Litany to DH buffs re: the crit problem referenced earlier. Then you'd replace the DH stat with proooobably one that increases non-GCD damage, kinda the reverse image of speed. That would obviously vary wildly in how desirable it is, but this is okay in my book.

So you'd have the flat all-damage stat, the rng all-damage stat, the weird stat, and the stat that covers the weird stat's holes (while also amplifying certain parts of it). So long as there's no more than one undesirable stat for a given job, nothing too awful can result really, but you'd make your substats meaningfully different and interesting as a conversation piece.

[Shurrikhan]

The crit buff problem is this - so long as Bard generates an outsized benefit from certain party comps, relative to the benefit other jobs and namely Machinist get from party comps, Bard will always and forever be the 'meta' choice over Machinist if the jobs are correctly balanced.

If you use a rescaling stat benefit, i.e. the same one used on Skill Speed but for which we've found no evidence of yet in Critical Hit or Direct Hit, the exponential component is removed. All that's left then is their own proc benefit, rather than any advantage due to stats, as their Critical Hit stat would provide the same throughput regardless of the % floor provided by Chain Stratagem. And the only way to fix that, frankly, is to remove all Crit buffs, which seems a bit overkill.

As it stands, I'm okay with Chain Stratagem being strong towards Bard and Bard wanting a SCH. I just don't want SCH to be so OP that its presence is pretty well guaranteed; it should be a fun bonus to be slightly planned for and around, with notice made of the costs in not taking the AST or WHM.

Its for that reason I don't like ranged being so dependent on DRG, either. It feels too... obvious, or obligatory.

I haven't the faintest clue where you get that 40% notion from - your average HS/RA gcd would go from 175p to 192.8p, so about a 10% boost. Ballad is worth ~26.67 pps at 38% crit; current AP is hard to calculate for reals due to the broader 80 vs 90 second context re: EA and BL, but just naively looking at autos and HS/RA would place it at about 27pps at max stacks. So a bit better than MB but mostly at early expac crit.

If you add a 20% chance of dealing double damage (.2*2 = .4). That's a 40% buff to each HS that remains an HS. That's not 40% buff overall, just, as I said then and now, to HS.
Using SkS sufficient for a 15-GCD AP if instantly maxed out somehow, for numeric convenience:
20% 12 HS / 3 RA -> 3000 pot. 200ppgcd
40% 9 HS / 6 RA -> 3150 pot. 210ppgcd.
5% WS ppgcd difference through the RA <> HS exchange.
Added 16% Attack Speed = 210*1.16 = 243.6 relative ppgcd.
AAs contribute a native 33.3 pps or 83.33 ppgcd. That, too, would be increased by 16% to bonus of 13.33 and total of 96.66.
Former total: 283.33. New total: 340. ~20% increase to Speed-scaled damage.
21% GCD epot increase overall (far less full epot % increase due to oGCDs). Over 13 GCDs as per the earlier minimum paramenter, that would end up at ~737 potency.

In either version, though, that can only compete with 6 or fewer Bloodletters over Mage's Ballad, which seems rather low at current Crit levels.

Taking one job's section by itself, it looks like you're just arbitrarily adding SkS scaling to various skills. If there's a universal thing there it'd be better to just make that a separate point.

I'm just ensuring no double-dip. EA already scales with Skill Speed, and by having Bloodletter and RoD be similarly affected in rate rather than in damage, it reduces clipping issues and gives a little more punch to AP.

Though I think making SkS even more nonsensical isn't really the answer. The DoT/AA damage scaling is already hamfisted; I'd prefer some alternate solution.

I don't see how this version is any more nonsensical. At present, SkS decreases GCD speeds in arbitrary tiers, ranging from like 118 to 168 per .01 seconds, except in the tiers which are like 48 point. It's ridiculous. And it means that Skill Speed is shit until a certain amount, and then it's your best stat as long as your job has very low oGCD percentage, while still shit to everyone else. And then it increases DoT damage by 1% per like... 173 points(? I'll have to double check, but it's a little worse than Det). That's just awkward.

This way's just a flat 1% damage per 160 stat points, same as DHit, Crit, and Det. It's just that it affects what it can via rate and what it can't with damage. So DoTs, rate not affectable --> damage. Abilities, rate not affectable -> damage. Everything else -> rate.

The effort to make every substat desirable has largely just been an exercise in homogenization. DH, Det and Crit are simply math problems where you work out which one increases all of your damage by the most, plus a couple cases of job-specific factors with Crit (and WAR DH). SkS tries to be different but still ends up only being wanted when it increases near-all of a job's damage, at a rate akin to Det but self-scaling instead of diminishing.

I would agree if not for playing high-SkS jobs like SAM. There's a ton of gameplay (rotational breakpoints and such) hidden in that stat. I just wish the other stats could feel like they have a real presence like Speed can. Crit on Bard and Monk comes close, but, not as interestingly to me. But managing an extended rotation, a RoF prep string, or double-Tornado on Monk where you fully know if you had just 80 SkS less you would have lost 2 (de)buff overlaps and would therefore have done something non-optimal, because it's all so tightly woven... that feels honestly exciting. And yet the imbalance prevents most jobs from even experiencing the part that isn't actually homogeneous in its gameplay, just because of the "uniqueness" of its distribution -- how "special" its scaling is.

So, to me, a good stat is one you can feel and be excited to hit a new breakpoint in. A good stat system is one where you can feel said progression and you don't feel required to theorycraft or sim every stat, which generally means balance and transparency. As far as context goes, a well designed job should interact with many stat breakpoints, but feel beholden to none of them. And the list goes on.

Admittedly, it's not an easy situation to perfect or even make look particularly well-crafted, but I do think it tends to be worth the effort, and I don't believe that means that these cares take away from or gut gameplay in any way; I feel it augments gameplay, and that without that happening stats are pointless outside of making vertical progression even within the same tier in vertical progression (which likewise is pointless unless it feels good, and all MMO studies point to the contrary).

Sadly, every time I feel like I can grasp some way to give that excitement to other stats, or even to new stats (which, again, is weird for me, seeing as I hate requiring theorycrafting, or any customization you can't actually feel and that's how large stat counts have felt like to me every time), it keeps needing more than XIV's tech will allow...

I'd prefer that SE back off of this, and instead simply decide to be fine with having some stats being more or less wanted by different jobs.

Back off, though? I don't feel like they've even started. Their only change this whole expansion was to slightly buff Crit, which is now again the god stat.

<crazy half-serious half-baked ideas follow>

In this vein, I think they could rework skill speed to affect auto-attack delay instead of damage (if it makes NIN want it, that's fine), and even also reduce cooldowns a la the old Spear.

The delay component is already in the suggestions, noted under General Changes and those most relevantly affected (Ninja, via Ninki, and Paladin, via Sword Oath). So if that's crazy coming from you, and by all fair assumption you're more sane than I...

I want the Spear reduction, too, but I don't want Hallowed Ground to be snapshotted to, say, a 7% faster recast time just because AP-BV and Fey Wind were both up when it activated. If I could do a dynamic cooling rate, rather than something snapshotted, I would, but seems SE isn't capable of some things even WoW's done since, say, 2006... I've used that for some AST suggestions though, combining what I called Haste (ability cooling rate) with Speed (Attack Speed) in a revised Arrow Card in order to try to better keep things in sync while moving towards more noticeable and broadly useful and balanced card effects (across the cards, at least; those suggestions in isolation would have been very "**** WHM").

Then I'd turn to Direct Hit and delete it. Keep Direct Hits in the game, but make it a chance only accessible via skills like Battle Voice and Inner Release.

Sounds fine to me. Heck, I don't even care to keep the baseline stat. Just felt to me like they didn't know how to fix Accuracy and worried people would freak out if there were fewer secondary stats, so they stuck a mediocre and redundant stat into the mix.

We'd still have to deal with Crit and Speed synergizing on Crit-dependent classes, though, which can be a larger scaling issue that even Direct Hit and Critical Hit's impact's on each other. Doubly so once Speed's not shit. And, this will disporportionately affect those with augmentative breakpoints, such as Monk being able to push from one Bootshine per Dragon Kick to two per. But, I'm more or less fine with that as long as the alternative playstyles are still competitive.

Maybe swap Chain and Litany to DH buffs re: the crit problem referenced earlier. Then you'd replace the DH stat with proooobably one that increases non-GCD damage, kinda the reverse image of speed. That would obviously vary wildly in how desirable it is, but this is okay in my book.

Kind of like how you feel about AP, I'm not sure that is wholly necessary. I do think WHM ought to offer something more to Bard, and many others, even if not as directly through its core mechanic as Chain Stratagem does, but I kinda like that there is something that's a bit disporportionately strong.

To me, the best MOBAs are ones where everyone thinks their OP until they hit the really high levels and know their competition well -- the kits just really work and you feel powerful in your own ways -- and yet there's still a huge amount of compositional freedom. No easy task, I know, but it's what I'd like to see from our roster. I'd like to see SCH as sort of the "obvious" choice, but not always the best one, though that is probably going to require that our fights feel a lot less like striking dummies.

That reverse image of speed, on the other hand, is already pretty well encapsulated via pure Damage buffs, and purposely mirroring an already bad situation, especially where siphoning from the more moderate contrast already in place, doesn't sound like a good idea to me...

So you'd have the flat all-damage stat, the rng all-damage stat, the weird stat, and the stat that covers the weird stat's holes (while also amplifying certain parts of it). So long as there's no more than one undesirable stat for a given job, nothing too awful can result really, but you'd make your substats meaningfully different and interesting as a conversation piece.

Iirc, ARR stats were a bit like this, in that Crit was disproportionately good at the start and weak at high amounts, Speed was disproportionately weak at the start and strong at high amounts, and Det was just... Det, and favored by auto-crit jobs. Bard and SMN, of course, preferred Crit more than most, and SMN avoided Speed like the plague.

(Back then with Fey Light I could hit a 1.75 GCD on shits-and-giggles SkS DRG, Haste scaled so steeply... I thought that was the cap til I got Fey Wind and Enhanced Arrow together on a SkS Monk. Heck, SkS Ninja was viable despite its clipping and oGCD damage, though within reason vis a vis latency.)

If you mean something more than that, I think that could definitely work, but only if the way stats on the whole work were a bit different.

I've noticed this in a few RPGs with highly specifically functioning stats, almost all of them kind of... deexponential. The more you get, the less they're worth per point. And so you tend to pick and choose what you want to carry. But, they also tend to allow a lot more freedom of stat allocation, such as perhaps having the gear carry a "color" of stat, which can then be allocated across multiple functions as you please, or just a larger spread of equal-tier gear to choose from.

But if you just mean "well shit, they put Skill Speed on the Crit gear... Why you do this to me?" I can't honestly say I get a kick out of that "conversation piece", apart from maybe a tiny bit of schadenfreude after PuG who wiped us repeatedly gets both pieces... that stats for which are pitiful.

[Grimoire-M]

Whew, long thread. I'll try to readdress my points later, but I think you've covered them well enough with your counter points already. I do have something to add though.

If you use a rescaling stat benefit, i.e. the same one used on Skill Speed but for which we've found no evidence of yet in Critical Hit or Direct Hit, the exponential component is removed. All that's left then is their own proc benefit, rather than any advantage due to stats, as their Critical Hit stat would provide the same throughput regardless of the % floor provided by Chain Stratagem. And the only way to fix that, frankly, is to remove all Crit buffs, which seems a bit overkill.

The problem with that logic is all that matters for BRD is that they get more rate to trigger their procs. Given you intend to make every stat 'equal, but different', this would always retain an advantage, however small. As you note, readjusting the curve on crit rate doesn't change how the Crit Rate buffs actually work. They are a linear, static, additive increase to Crit Rate. A rework to the Crit stat is already highly unlikely, and altering the stat curves on Crit Rate/Damage to make it harder to stack Crit Rate just makes Crit Rate buffs the best raid buffs in the game period, because they still scale up with that damage boost, compared to the flat increase offered by Bard's Battle Voice no matter how Direct Hit you have.

But if we assume that the Crit stat was changed in the manner you describe, what do you do to avoid removing the Crit Rate raid buffs? Well, if you want to change the Raid buffs themselves, the only reasonable alternative is to simply make them buff the stat directly by some proportion. That would in effect ensure it's a linear increase, but retain the relative scaling issue for Bard (and to a lesser degree Monk) as noted earlier. However, we also have reason to believe this won't happen. Because of what happened with Attack Speed buffs and Skill/Spell Speed in Heavensward. SE simply changed the tooltips of every previous "Skill/Spell Speed" boosts to say Attack Speed in order to better reflect how they actually work, rather than fix the problem where Attack Speed buffs don't stack additively with Skill/Spell Speed. Instead they stack multiplicatively, and thus they actually devalue Skill/Spell Speed by their relative contribution. Even before factoring in Skill/Spell Speed's other problems this was the case, and I believe the reason this change was done specifically was because they added that DoT Potency effect in Heavensward (the same one you want to spread to Damage & Healing oGCDs), and wanted to make it clear that Leylines, the melee Attack Speed buffs, PoM, and the Enhanced Pet Actions trait that granted SMN/SCH "Spell Speed" randomly at the time, would not have any effect on any of those classes DoTs.

But, to be honest, the real argument here is: If you want piercing gone, why not change Bard's crit procs too? It's the same kind of problem. It creates class-specific synergies that encourage certain combinations over others. What significant benefit does BRD gain from having this ability relative to other classes? Is it interesting to have a stat that affects proc rate? Sure, it is, but as you've noted, it's not the concept itself, just that there are already a fair number of raid buffs to exploit and no signs they're going anywhere. Given how many loopholes it takes to make Bard work on Crit procs specifically, why not move all their Crit procs over to Direct Hit instead? Hell, I don't think it would be a bad thing to make all DPS procs scale off of Direct Hit. It would actually make it meaningfully distinct from Crit. It's already a linear damage increase because the only thing that scales from the stat is your Direct Hit rate, and it lets you tune how much of an increase it is depending on the procs of each DPS in question. Only one class has a Direct Hit raid buff at all right now too, and it also happens to be Bard's Battle Voice, which is a comparatively easy thing to change or remove compared to Litany/Chain/Spear. The only other class that has a crit-based damage proc of any kind is Monk. They have Deep Meditation, which is one trait that could easily be reworked or changed, and last I recall, isn't nearly as big of an issue. All you have to do is rework Battle Voice into a damage increase in some other fashion, change the tooltips on Bard to say Direct Hit instead of Crit, double check Deep Meditation, and give AST a card effect to replace Spire or Ewer that isn't Direct Hit. By doing that, you've pretty much solved the problem for good while also opening up design space to alter each DPS's Direct Hit Rate via personal cooldowns or buffs, rather than relying on their party to do that for them.

[Cetonis]

20% 12 HS / 3 RA -> 3000 pot. 200ppgcd
40% 9 HS / 6 RA -> 3150 pot. 210ppgcd.

That's not how this math works. 3 is not 20% of 12, and 6 is not 40% of 9. You can't get an RA proc off of an RA, so you need to count Heavy Shots, not GCDs.

At present, SkS decreases GCD speeds in arbitrary tiers, ranging from like 118 to 168 per .01 seconds

No, that's not how it works at all. The first tier is shorter (17 iirc), the rest are all 66 or 67, averaging 66.66, which makes sense because Det averages 166.66 for +1% flat. DH is only not-41.66 because it'd be "strictly" worse than Det if it was.

Also, the "nonsensical" comment was about how many things SkS does that have no relation to speed. It's kind of a bad look in the sense that any new player is gonna scratch their head at it, and it's really transparent how much SE has struggled with substats.

Their only change this whole expansion was to slightly buff Crit

When? It's pretty normal for SE not to mess with substats mid-expac, so in terms of evaluating what they're doing the last relevant point is the start of 4.0. At that time they nerfed Crit (lowered the base crit multiplier), made SkS more nonsense as described, and replaced Accuracy with the very boring Direct Hit.

The effort overall is in the direction of making substats as non-distinct as possible - three that increase damage with different variance, and speed that's just kind of there because it feels like it ought to be, with a bunch of asterisks applied to it to make it more like the 'just increase damage' stats. Your suggestion is to continue this and make SkS even more of a 'just increase damage' stat.

It's all good and well to want all stats to be equally desirable by any give job, but the reality is that so long as you want to have a Crit stat or a Det stat or a DH stat, then by necessity you're saying that all substats need to boil down to global damage increases.

Because anything that isn't, will either be substantively more or less desirable than your global damage stat, and that's unacceptable under your goals. Yet if all substats need to necessarily be same-y, why even have them?

That's why I think it'd be better for SE to just decide to be fine with 'bad stats', and let players have those conversations about which job uses what stats better. Even if there are known better and worse stats for a given job, stats would be at least a little more interesting than all but two dps jobs having the same exact priority because every substat just boosts global damage.

And yes, let players be disappointed by gear sometimes, because that also means they'll be excited by gear sometimes too. Just don't make unique slots like the +35 ilvl weapon bad (or maybe just don't make any weapons bad).

A heavier diminishing-returns paradigm could be interesting too, that is to say if they found a way to make Det and DH diminish more sharply and removed the Crit bonus scaling, then for most jobs it'd be optimal to balance the three. (you'd still need to figure out SkS but yknow)

---

It kind of sounds like what you reall want here are talents - that is, you want substats to represent options that can impact how a job plays, so you want SkS to be viable for everyone since asking for a proper talent system is unrealistic.

However, as you likely know, YoshiP opposes talents because he opposes player choice when it comes to how a job plays. "False choice" and all that. They'd be equally opposed to trying to make substats a real decision. So if you want talents, you might as well just talk about how they could add talents in a non-awful way, instead of trying to backdoor the matter with Skill Speed.

For instance, one thing they could do is to make talent points an additional 'currency' of a sort, i.e. make it something where you can earn them at level cap at some controlled rate (complete with catch-up etc.) for doing certain content. SE could use an extra avenue of reward, so if they did cave on adding a talent concept, I wouldn't be surprised if it's because they want to use it as a new kind of carrot like this.

Or perhaps you think talent points could be on gear, such that you now have a fifth substat (more gear differentiation) and players would need to weigh whatever value they get from talents versus the substat. I'd think that'd be too mathy for the average player who doesn't know the nuts and bolts, but maybe SE would find that sort of obfuscation to be a positive.

[Grimoire-M]

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.

No worries, I did actually read them. That said, let's get to addressing my previous points so you can understand where I'm coming from. Because I sure as hell wasn't clear. Let's start with your Mana Shift changes.

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 problem with this change has nothing to do with how it affects the target. I have few complaints there (imo it's not enough, but the idea is appreciated). The problem is you've ignored the cost to each caster, and that's the biggest issue here. BLM needs to use a Thundercloud proc during UI in order to use Mana Shift without clipping or a major damage loss, and that's basically unavoidable without changing T3 or B4 into instant-cast spells currently. And even with that, their AF/UI rotation artificially gates the cooldown for them, meaning they will never be on par with the other two using it on cooldown. It's sort of like MCH's heat problem, to give a comparable example.

Which gets us to RDM's problems with Mana Shift. Simply put, they cannot afford to use Mana Shift on cooldown and still Raise on demand without a Bard or Machinist in the party currently. Last I checked, it takes two Lucids to be able to Raise once with minimal cost and still sustain Mana Shifts on them. And that's assuming they don't die. If that happens, good luck affording anything. The lower cooldown only exacerbates this problem for them, and while I see you attempt to address this point seperately, we have to keep in mind that the MP boost on revival is a catch up mechanic, not something to consider overall.

Summoner, by contrast, can afford to hardcast Raise and still use this because they can sustain their own MP easily without even factoring in Lucid Dreaming or Energy Drain at all. I've died on SMN before and been able to still Mana Shift for full value almost immediately after being raised. This is partially due to Lucid and Mana Shift's current cooldowns matching one another, sure, but the real reason is because of how SMN was changed in 4.0 and 4.1. The 4.0 changes resulted in SMN barely using their MP on anything other than Ruin III due to the combination of the Tri-Disaster reset, removal of their third DoT spell and its higher cost, changing Shadowflare to an oGCD with no cost, and the addition of Lucid Dreaming to further sustain spamming it. 4.1 then merged Ruin I and III together, massively freeing up their MP pool, while the lower MP cost on resummoning pets makes it easy to recover even if they do die. All of those changes essentially removed all the barriers to their MP management to the point that they actually can break ahead solely off of Aetherflow with a low enough GCD. Lucid actually winds up paying for the Mana Shift and a Raise and then some on SMN specifically as a result of all of this. This is why I said it was only a buff to SMN. They're the only ones who can actually take advantage of the lower cooldown. If you want to significantly buff the skill, you first have to lower the cost to the caster relative to its output by significant margins in order for RDM to be able to use it more liberally, or remove it completely so BLM can use it during AF without a major DPS loss. If you don't start there, you can't even begin to speak of competing with Refresh.

And on that note, if the explicit goal is to compete with Refresh, I have to wonder why you aren't removing Refresh's AoE component and turning it into the MP equivalent of Goad and giving it to both the Ranged and Caster DPS respectively instead. If it's just for the Foes interaction, I'd actually argue that the mana spending on it should be removed, especially given the TP/MP consolidation that's coming anyways. It's a gimmicky interaction that doesn't need to stay just because it existed in ARR/HW at one point. If you want that kind of resource management, arguably you could make an independent song cooldown that can accompany the base song rotation, which is simply about keeping that buff up using the procs you get.

Speaking of resource management, let's talk BLM.

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.

The problem with this is MP costs don't scale with anyone's base mana. They're based on their level 0 costs (which, yes, level 0 does exist) which is multiplied by a universal modifier that grows based on their level. This formula is different from their base MP growth formula, which unfortunately grows slower than the costs themselves and is what lead to the ARR/HW Piety breakpoints in the first place. BLM hasn't had the right numbers in place because the current formulas don't allow for that kind of granularity, which just tells me that it's a leftover from 1.0. SE has since 'fixed' the breakpoint issue by making Piety only affect healers and has repeatedly tuned BLM's MP costs down in order to support their ideal rotation, and I expect them to do so again next expansion in order to account for whatever new rotation they decide on. These MP cost changes are basically meaningless within that context, though I do support the idea you were going for. My personal hope is that they address some of BLM's clipping and mobility issues in general regardless, and there are plenty of ways to do that while retaining BLM's status as a turret DPS.

The nerfs to BLM would only be present in the most perfect of fight circumstances. In all others, it was a buff.

It was a buff that doesn't really alter their gameplay, which BLM does need some help with. Rgardless it was a nerf to their maximum DPS, and due to the nature of the class as a sustained DPS powerhouse, it doesn't really help them at their niche. I can agree that maybe BLM doesn't need that much damage, but I also think that their real problems have nothing to do with their raw DPS output in an ideal scenario. Instead they mostly have to do with how they have to push it, and how that impacts their fight-to-fight optimization. For example, a big thing you could do is reduce the cast times on Fire/Blizzard IV and Flare to match the GCD while tweaking their damage accordingly. Because currently it is a DPS increase to use these abilities in a specific manner that ensures you're never hard casting Fire IV if you can help it. This way you ensure that BLMs are only taking movement into consideration when using these abilities aside from solving clipping issues in their opener. That's the starting point in my opinion. What you do from there is honestly not as important. Numbers rarely bother me unless they explicitly have significant rotational impact, which is extremely easy to avoid on damage potencies.

That said, let's look at RDM again.

The changes to RDM are, on the whole, a total (rDPS + pDPS) buff.

Sure, they are. What bothers me about them has little to do with the fact you want to buff them. It's the gameplay that arises from it. I'll pull my quote up again for this.

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.

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.

RDM's overall mana generation without factoring in the melee combo and Verflare/Holy's contributions currently averages to a bit over 10 each GCD if managed optimally. In practice it doesn't vary much at all. Bumping their melee combo down to 75/75 only opens up one more GCD per rotation typically, which helps with desyncing somewhat, but doesn't change how it's used. Your Impulse trait will make Jolt II break ahead of using Verstone/fire after two dual casts, which only serves to tighten that timing up. I'm fine with that, but the combo cost change doesn't let you accelerate with Manafication much faster than you currently could, meaning those timings don't really change at all. Sure, being able to use Manafication mid combo lets you accelerate by another 20 mana every 2 minutes on top of that, which at best lets them break even with their normal mana generation rate with minimal loss, but given the length of that sequence in the first place, it's unlikely to gain more under raid buffs even when well timed, which at best is just going to be Battle Voice & Litany. To me, what RDM wants is a way to properly align their melee combo with raid buffs without having to sacrifice their sustained DPS. Thus, they need more meaningful ways to control their mana generation. Helping them accelerate is a good idea, sure, but a much more meaningful way to contribute to solving RDM's issues is to give them a way to slow down their mana generation, allowing them to align their melee combo at a more appropriate time rather than simply mashing it out at every opportunity.

Furthermore, you add another Slashing/Piercing condition and physical/magic overlap onto the melee combo specifically to compensate for some of these nerfs. Do you really want to do that? Really? You're creating the same problem BRD has with crit rate, in that you're giving RDM exclusive access to raid buff synergies the other two casters will never have access to. Contre Sixte and Fleche and the dashes are already treated as generic physical damage, and are the only abilities in RDM's kit treated as such. The melee combo itself is fine the way it is. The problem lies solely with RDM's mana generation and lack of sustained DPS, and is already locked to heavy physical comps due to how Embolden works, none of which are addressed by this. It's actually counter productive to your stated goals.

However, your oGCD changes bother me for a different reason. While they compensate for the damage nerfs in theory, they ignore some of the fight issues RDM already has with them. Displacement is already notoriously awful to use in certain fights and putting more weight on finding opportunities to use it is only going to be detrimental to their damage in the long run. In my opinion, none of the dashes should have potencies to begin with. Maybe just Corps-a-corps, but certainly not on Displacement. Shift the potency on that into Contre Sixte and Fleche, which don't have these issues. That way RDM can function in any given raid environment without getting randomly screwed out of damage because the arena is too small or the edges decided they're on fire. There's a reason Bard had the potency on Repelling Shot removed.

I don't get why you're trying to preserve Embolden's decay by flipping it into a growth effect either. If anything, it actually makes it harder to use for the average player. It could easily be bumped down to a 3% static boost to everyone's damage that's doubled for yourself for the the original duration/cooldown and provide equal benefit in a standard comp without creating weird timing issues in the opener or for subsequent use. You already aim to place the 10-6% window around the same time TA is up regardless. I agree that the rDPS boost of your current version might be too much, but I feel the way to approach fixing Embolden is to make it easier to use for players regardless of composition while nerfing its overall impact, and tune up from there if needed. To me, if you want that kind of damage ramp or decay, make it a personal only cooldown instead. Once it starts affecting the rest of the party you get timing tension that doesn't need to exist.

That, finally, brings us to our last caster DPS.

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.

Plenty, I'm afraid. We'll start with the biggest issue in the room. Pets. Are. Garbage. And unfortunately, I can say that you didn't actually accomplish anything in that regard other than the usual signposting we get about it.

Sic no longer prevents the manual casting of spells and abilities.

The problem with this Sic change is it doesn't actually do anything meaningful. The current Sic and Obey already don't work properly. All you're really doing is hiding the problem with Obey using Sic. Pets are unresponsive to the player for the same reason that Rescue feels garbage to use unless pre-planned. The engine and server prioritize animation fluidity over responsiveness, and part of that means they backload some of their mechanical work onto the server before playing their animations, rather than risk massive desyncing. Pets take one mini server tick (the same one Macros operate on incidentally, which corresponds roughly to 1 second inbetween each action check after inputting the command initially) in order to ensure that the command was properly registered. Rescue takes two, both double check each player's relative positions and attempt to properly root the target for the animation before it goes off. Sic just makes it so that these checks are done 'automatically' by the server for the pet oGCDs once they start attacking. Any manual input has to fit into one of the micro-ticks in order to execute properly, and that includes Enkindle and Devotion.

The reason Ifrit works so well on Obey or Sic is because its auto-spell is instant cast, leaving two mini-ticks inbetween for proper checks, allowing it to actually weave properly. That 1s on Wind Blade is enough to screw up Garuda's timings on Obey because she's in the middle of her Wind Blade animation for one of those mini-ticks and begins casting it on another, leaving her with only one guaranteed mini-tick check per one of her GCDs. And Embrace's 2s cast practically guarantees a clip on the fairies no matter what unless you use Sic, from what I've seen. The server unfortunately doesn't do pre-casting in the same way a player would force it to by mashing a button. If it fails, it tries to queue the action and waits another second or drops it entirely, with two exceptions. One of those is the auto spells, which appear to queue automatically and are likely the cause for those drops, but I can tell you it's nowhere near consistent. The other is movement. As long as the pet isn't moving, it can predictively queue a check to eventually ensure it goes off, but moving inbetween at any point breaks that queue, which I've been told can allow you to forcibly execute a command, via a combination of Place and Heel into whatever oGCD you want, or using a different oGCD then Embrace with Selene on SCH, though I personally find that awkward. I believe this is why the Egi auto-root themselves once they've landed an attack or heal and why they're so often not affected by knockback effects. This is done in order to facilitate this check for the auto spells specifically. The only exception I've seen to this is if the action itself requires the pet to be in melee range in order to execute it when they're not, in which case everything, even the auto spells, is simply halted until the pet is in range and that ability is executed. This applies to Crimson Cyclone, Inferno (once properly queued), Shockwave, Mountain Buster, and Landslide specifically, all of which are treated as melee range pet oGCDs.

The only way to fix those issues is via constant engine updates made to tweak these problems out, and I 100% agree that they should have been fixed ages ago. However, I have no qualms saying it's not gonna happen anytime soon. These issues have been known since ARR and they're still not fixed. For all intents and purposes, I think we should assume can't be fixed. However, they can be designed around in the meantime, and that's the real thing that bothers me. How do we do that then? Well, let's start with what works. Rouse.

Rouse is the only pet skill that isn't screwed over by the server checks. Why? Because it's a buff you apply to your pet. Pets can recieve and register buffs immediately, like a player would. If you want to fix pet responsiveness, you can use that effect to work around the problem with pet AI. Each pet oGCD can simply put a buff on the pet to command them to use the given action the next time they're able to, which the server is already checking for. It gets around the biggest problem pets have regarding their responsiveness, dropping inputs due to auto spells. Use that, and they no longer have that problem. Sure, they will still have a delay, but the player can now observe it, and that's enough for them to be able to work around it. That's the easiest way to ensure they're actually responsive.

And for the record, I'm fine with your button consolidation ideas. Maybe not with SMN specifically, but in general I agree. Which leaves this last nitpick.

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.

I'll be honest, Wyrm Wave proccing off of oGCDs in general is a big problem to me. It's functionally easier to make it so he only considers your spells (or just the Ruin line, even) when making his attacks, and would go a long way to making him feel more fluid. The alternative would be to implement a pet hotbar, which I believe SE was trying to avoid in the first place.

The lack of a pet hotbar is why Bahamut feels so awful to use regardless of his oGCDs. He doesn't technically have an auto-spell, at least in terms of server checks, because of his 1.5s GCD timer doesn't sync up with them. Yet it is prioritized over certain kinds of movement like an auto-spell would be. However, he doesn't root himself once he's attacked something the way the Egi do. I think SE removed that function for his implementation specifically in order to avoid needing a hotbar at all. His current priority is to use Wyrm Wave if commanded, first and foremost, then to follow the player till he is in Heel range, then to use Akh Morn, assuming he remembers. If you keep queuing Wyrm Waves for him to use he stays in place. The moment he has a break he often barrels towards you, and the only way to make him stop if you want to use Enkindle Bahamut is to queue a Wyrm Wave immediately and move towards him and wait till he begins charging (there is an audio queue for this before he uses Akh Morn).

All of this could be fixed by rooting him in place once summoned or upon attacking, but the cost of doing so is SE would need to give him a pet hotbar so he could be Heeled and/or Placed, otherwise there would be complaints that he feels bad in dungeons. Or they could let him break Line of Sight rules, but that just creates an even bigger mess, tbh. I believe they did this as a compromise to avoid having to do any of that. Which is fine, in theory. In practice however, it feels like they really should've just implemented his pet hotbar if they wanted to keep this current iteration in tact. The reason they didn't is because he's only around for 21s out of every 2 minutes. He's not worth doing that for.

In my opinion, making him queue Wyrm Wave off of spells and altering his priority to first use Akh Morn if told to is the way he should've worked in the first place. That way Wyrm Wave would have been a cleaner implementation, while changing Enkindle Bahamut can be accomplished using the above pet command buff change I outlined above, even if the player can't see it on a menu, an aura on Bahamut himself would suffice.

This is the bare minimum SE can do to address SMN's issues without changing any buttons. From here, I'm spitballing based on preference.

And I'll get it out of the way fast. Heavensward SMN was the best overall implementation of the job to date. It was not the the most fluid to use, not well designed overall, and not well balanced, either, but what Heavensward added was still overall better for the job, relative to what Stormblood added. This came as a result of how ARR SMN overall felt incomplete. The a combination of things specifically added to SMNs kit in Heavensward fixed a ton of issues they had coming off of ARR. Booksmacking was a weird gimmick yet free damage that was absolutely significant. Setting up DoTs took a lot of time. Maintaining them was sometimes awkward, particularly when it came to optimizing Raging Strikes windows, and outside of that they didn't really have much to do. Pets still felt awkward to use, and their cooldowns did not feel all that impactful, but Contagion made Garuda an auto-include because she extended your snapshotted DoTs. And their AoE always kinda felt bad, because of the 4-target limit Bane had at the time. Even with the lack of fall off.

Heavensward solved every single one of these issues except for Contagion.

DWT became the centerpiece of the class, adding a cooldown that sped up and unified SMNs buttons around a single burst phase. The only problem with this was SE's intentions for the ability did not match the way players used it. It was supposed to be a Ruin III filler button only, but it wound up being better than that in terms of flow. 15s out of every minute oddly enough felt like the right amount of time for a burst phase like this too. Significant enough to matter, but also left enough downtime for you to care about it when it came up. Aethertrail and the old timers on Fester/Painflare added this neat if needless tension regarding its timer. You couldn't fit all three under Aetherflow, but even if you could, you would've had to save one in order to refresh the Aethertrail timer. Sometimes this didn't align with a fight, but the DPS loss of simply using DWT again in order to account for downtime in a fight wasn't that bad, either.

Tri-Disaster solved the issue of SMN taking time to set up their DoTs and its 1 minute cooldown was perfectly aligned with DWT and Contagion, letting you snapshot your DoTs under the window. But they didn't let you ignore your DoT spells either. You still had to use them once every single minute even with Contagion's extension, naturally creating their own a micro phase where you ramped down in preparation for your next Aetherflow refresh before you ramped up again.

Ruin III gave SMN more damage at no cost inside DWT and something to care about outside DWT, MP management. Initially this was 120 potency, so it was still worth weaving with Ruin II before it was buffed to 200 potency, which resulted in simply spamming it and eating the clips on Aetherflow wound up being better overall DPS for most players, only NA players with super high ping couldn't take full advantage of it, though using Swift cast let you get around that problem.

Painflare gave SMN something to help accelerate their opener and much needed AoE burst. You only ever got 1 or 2 of these per aetherflow, but it felt like something.

Bane had its target limit removed and a damage taper off added, that, to be frank, I don't think was actually working at the time. But man did it ever feel good to use. What made it grossly overpowered was the sheer amount of things you could fuel into DWT. This was the biggest headache SE had to deal with, because buffing SMN's DoTs would feed into their already massive AoE potential. A1/2S were their fights, hands down.

Deathflare was and still is just a big old nuke. It was the hardest hitting spell or ability at the time, and accomplished it's goal of being that 'big spike' send off to DWT that SMN needed at the time.

Their main pitfall at the time was in those nuances. Dumping MP into Ruin III wasn't obvious. Aethertrail's timer made managing it optimally clunky at times. and the fact that they had so many buttons to press in a short period of time in a very specific order every minute was reminiscent of the same problems MCH has now, but not nearly to the same extent as MCH. The payoff wasn't nearly as important, yet it was also incredibly easy to get rolling. Spur/Rouse contributed to the bloat problem massively, but Miasma II had its odd moments too, since extending it with Contagion was a DPS boost, and thus was worth it over the old Ruin III too iirc.

I agree that HW SMN needed button consolidation and specific changes to make using them easier back then, but not at the cost of their flow. Their overall flow was fantastic at the time, making their few problems actually less of an issue than they are now. When you look at that and what Stormblood did, I honestly feel what we got was a mixed bag. The Aetherflow lockouts were the worst change Stormblood made, easily, and every change made to Ruin III afterward was basically done to justify it. Bahamut is frustrating, the Tri-Disaster reset was completely unnecessary, and Devotion was not well implemented in the first place before being given the bandaid buff it didn't really need. While Spur was removed, Rouse still exists, and it also has its own lockout with Bahamut that also shouldn't exist in the first place. The lower cooldown on Fester/Painflare, Contagion change, DoT consolidation and the Shadowflare rework were good for balance but also removed some of SMN's base rotation in the process, and I've already noted what they and Lucid did to their MP management and how that destroyed what little there was left to care about in the single target rotation. The Tri-Bind change was more or less a patch over the Bane nerf that imo wasn't really necessary. More than anything else, however, the one thing that does not make sense to me is Bahamut. Bahamut should have been an extension of DWT, not a seperate phase that winds up replacing it entirely. Particularly when you factor in their clunky implementation and what SE did to make DWT work afterward, it's hard to justify keeping them seperated in the first place.

I made a poll and thread about the Aetherflow Lockouts specifically on the cusp of 4. being released, and it had a 60/40 Ratio in favor of removing them. In the thread most of the people in the 40 count that spoke up either cared more about Bahamut's addition and the micro-phase feel the lockouts created than how it used to work, as many of those people were either new to the class entirely, or had tried it previously in ARR/HW and simply dropped the class immediately rather than stick and learn the optimal rotation at the time (Which I personally attribute to all of the X minute personal cooldown stacking going on at the time, and not learning to track that stuff based on Aetherflow's cooldown and the Aethertrail Timer specifically being a major point of frustration, both problems that have since been fixed).

Given a choice, this the full list of things I would do to fix SMN:

- Aetherflow Gauge reworked. Aetherflow and Aethertrail are allowed to coexist again. Executing Aetherflow abilities still grants Aethertrail, surrounding each Aetherflow socket with a blue outline on the normal UI, and having three seperate nodes on the simplified UI to track Aethertrail.
- Fester and Painflare reworked. Now share a cooldown of 2s. (This just tightens up Aetherflow usage in the opener without causing any issues elsewhere).

- Dreadwyrm Trance reworked. Now replaces Rouse via a new trait, Trance Mastery I. Increases Magic Damage Dealt by 10% for 20s. Also applies Rouse to pet, increasing healing magic potency and damage dealt by pet by 40%. While roused, pet will be immune to Stun, Sleep, Bind, and Heavy. Costs 3 Aethertrail to use, and has a 20s cooldown. (No longer prevents the execution of Aetherflow abilities while under its effects, reduces the cast time of Ruin III, or increases the potency of Tri-Bind)

- Tri-Bind Reworked: Now called Tri-Ruin. Deals unaspected damage with a potency of 60, with an MP cost of 720, the same as Bio III. (No longer inflicts Bind, but now counts as a Ruin spell for the purposes of Ruination)
- Bane Reworked: Spreads any debuffs you've inflicted on a target to nearby enemies. Potency of your damage over time effects is reduced by 20% for the second enemy, 40% for the third, and 60% for all remaining enemies. (Now spreads Tri-Disaster's third debuff in addition to Bio/Miasma III. Maximum damage drop off has effectively been doubled without changing the curve at all)

- Summon Bahamut reworked. Now shares a cooldown with Dreadwyrm Trance. Increases magic damage dealt by 10% for 20s and summons Demi-Bahamut to fight by your side. Each time you use a spell on an enemy target, Demi-Bahamut will execute Wyrmwave on the same target. This action cannot be assigned to a hotbar. (Triggering from abilities removed. DWT's Damage bonus added. Deathflare, however, is not available during this period.)
- New Trait added: Trance Mastery II. Allows for the strengthening of Dreadwyrm Trance with Dreadwyrm Aether upon executing Deathflare during Dreadwyrm Trance, enabling the summoning of Demi-Bahamut. When your Dreadwyrm Aether is fully stored (2 units), Dreadwyrm Trance will change to Summon Bahamut. (Note: This results in Bahamut being summoned once every 3 minutes instead of 2.)
- Wyrm Wave potency increased to 200. (This is there mostly to compensate for the damage nerf inside Trance, not the nerf to how often you can use it, which is an appropriate nerf, imo. Notably, as a result of the trigger changes, this ability actually gains value from from spell speed without needing a direct potency boost).
- Enkindle Bahamut reworked. Shares a cooldown with Enkindle and replaces it during Dreadwyrm Trance. Cannot be assigned to a hotbar. (Sorry, less Akh Morns)
- Enhanced Enkindle reworked: Reduces Enkindle's cooldown to 1 minute. (Distributing the lost Akh Morn damage around to every DWT instead via this change, and removing the proc in the process, which really had no reason to exist in the first place.)
- Tri-Disaster reworked. Now afflicts target with Bio III and Miasma III. If used while not under the effects of Dreadwyrm Trance or Summon Bahamut, also inflicts Ruination, increasing the potency of Ruin spells used against the target by 10 for 15s.
Summon Bahamut Effect: Afflicts target with Vulnerability Up, increasing all damage dealt to the target by 3% for 15s.
Dreadwyrm Trance Effect: Afflicts target with an additional status effect depending on Egi you currently have out for 15s.
- Garuda: Increases target's magic damage taken by 10%.
- Ifrit: Increases target's physical damage taken by 5%.
- Titan: Decreases target's damage dealt by 5%.
(A lot to take in, but basically Tri-Disaster does something appropriate based on what Egi you have out when used at an ideal time. These effects can also be spread over multiple targets)
- Ruin I potency increased to 110.
- Ruin II potency reduced to 90. (Accounts for booksmacking at low levels and discourages overusing it for mobility. That's it).
- Ruin Mastery reworked. Ruin I now grants Further Ruin I, enabling the use of Ruin III/IV. Further Ruin stacks up to 3 times.
- Ruin III reworked. Now deals unaspected damage with a potency of 200. Costs one Further Ruin stack. This cost is ignored while under effect of Dreadwyrm Trance or Summon Bahamut. (Ruin III no longer replaces Ruin I)
- Ruin IV reworked. Now deals unaspected damage with a potency of 200. Costs two Further Ruin stacks. Cost ignored while under effect of Dreadwyrm Trance or Summon Bahamut. This cost is ignored while under effect of Dreadwyrm Trance or Summon Bahamut. (Ruin IV no longer replaces Ruin II)
- Enhanced Ruin II Reworked. Now called Ruin Mastery II. Grants a 15% chance that a pet action will trigger Further Ruin I. Ruin I now grants Further Ruin II. Ruin II now grants Further Ruin I. Maximum Further Ruin stacks increased to 6.

- Contagion reworked. Now deals wind damage with a potency of 100 and inflicts wind damage over time with a potency of 100 to target for 15s.
- Radiant Shield reworked. Creates a barrier around self and nearby party members for 15s. When barrier is stuck, deals fire damage over time to striker with a potency of 30 for 9s. (This is comparatively minor damage compared to the old version, but still has a notable advantage in certain AoE situations compared to Contagion. Contagion's significantly stronger in single target situations specifically in order to help combat the extra damage Ifrit provides via auto attacks).

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.

Personally, I don't feel the way you're altering Bard even after these changes is all that meaningful to be honest. It's not for lack of forethought on your part either. There are things I like and things I dislike. Allowing WM to store PP stacks and making Bloodletter/Rain of Death affected by Skill Speed is a nice change for sure, but the cooldown doesn't really need to go on the former at all. You're gated by DoT ticks already and they sync up perfectly, and under optimal conditions you're not proccing more than you can handle very often. I appreciate the intent behind the Paeon changes but disagree with the execution. Arrow Helix sounds like an implementation nightmare and I would not wish it on any intern. Twin Bolt is fine but I question why you're doing this when Barrage exists and I don't really want to think about how that specific interaction would work. Ballad doesn't really need to be any more busy, again for the same reason. DoT ticks already gate its use just fine. Dissonance's numbers worry me a lot too when you factor in just how good Ballad is for AoE already. Overall the fact that you'd be pressing the same two buttons inbetween GCDs regardless of song ad-nauseum is what raises the biggest red flag to me. I get the point behind the consolidation but some of it is consolidation for consolidation's sake. Refulgent Arrow doesn't need to be moved to Heavy Shot either, you just need to upgrade the Heavy Shot proc so it instead reapplies Straight Shot's buff immediately and grants the current RA proc instead. RA is something the player has to decide when to use and shouldn't be moved onto your main filler button, and that buff solves the problem of putting it on Straight Shot without that much of a DPS increase to Bard overall.

And I don't think people realize just how good stacking crit rate is on Bard in terms of affecting their overall DPS. Just by the nature of the class stacking Crit creates a positive feedback loop of more procs which leads to more oGCD spam which in term gives you more chances to crit again for even more damage. Between your oGCDs and your GCDs, your GCDs do hit harder and more often, but the more crit you have the more your oGCDs are able close that gap, to the point that they can be worth almost half of your damage contribution if not equal for two of your three songs. AST and SCH are already considered the best two healers and if the former draws a naked Spear Bard is hands down the best class to throw it on. Unlike other raid buffs, these stack additively. And that works in Bard's favor in this case. If Chain/Litany are both already up on the boss giving them a Single Target Spear is morely likely to beat out spreading it than any other card on any other class. DRG and SCH's buffs both sync up with the potion timer in order to 30% Crit Chance for 45s every 6 minutes and 15% crit chance, which was more than you could get at the beginning of this expansion, and when you factor in snapshotting, that bonus is available for the majority of each Ballad afterward. I believe now with the current BiS gear you only require one of these two to push over the threshold where it's better to spam Pitch Perfect on cooldown in WM, while in Ballad you're already all but guaranteed to be spamming it repeatedly.

Removing Foes feels like a missed opportunity too, namely because adding a song specialized for AoE DPS specifically over single target DPS would actually change up your song rotation based on any significant AoE phase present in the fight that you could take advantage of. Ballad is your all-around good song, Paeon is filler when nothing else is better, WM is strictly single target DPS, so adding Foes as the go-to AoE song and toning down Ballad's AoE contributions while toning up Paeon makes perfect sense. Battle Voice, while handled better than Foes is currently, is unfortunately a flat out a mistake given the TP/MP merger coming in 5.0. Just make it into a standard, no nonsense raid cooldown and leave it at that.

All you're really doing in effect with the Wide Volley/Grenado Shot changes is creating a needless and somewhat hidden punishment mechanism. I'd be equally as fine with it if you wanted them to have the extended range period and simply replaced the original skills with them. My problem with it is they don't really add anything meaningful when it comes to their AoE rotations as it is. There are alternative ways you could actually add them back in that actually do something other than drain TP faster. For example, Grenado Shot could be added back in on MCH specifically by using a toggle effect to alter their Single Target combo into an AoE one. It doesn't save any buttons since you'd be consolidating the current Spread Shot in the process, but it does allow you to actually add it back in a meaningful manner, as well as adding a third AoE weaponskill to help with their burst. Wide Volley could easily be added back in while Quick Nock could be remade into an AoE version of Empyreal Arrow (Quick Nock has the better animation for being made into an oGCD, hence why I chose it over Wide Volley), existing independently from other weaponskills and having its own internal cooldown but gaining similar properties from its trait. That would help Bard's baseline proc management with minimal effect on their gameplay too, and arguably they might even need the personal damage boost after pulling them away from Crit or scaled procs altogether as described in my earlier post.

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.

I'm just gonna say this, when it comes to MCH, it isn't about the skill gap. Clunkiness. Is. Bad. Period. People jumped ship from MCH because of how SE changed it in Stormblood, and while arguably it had a similar problem juggling so many cooldowns all at once in Heavensward, so did many of the other classes, and it was on a slow enough scale that it could be managed. MCH may be hard but it's not for the right reasons in Stormblood. The only meaningful long-term skill test added in Stormblood was immediately patched out of relevance in 4.1, destroying the job's optimization in the process. Everything else was done simply to speed up the job overall, to the point it winds up being a detriment due to specific abilities and their interaction. HW SMN had a similar mad-minute rotation with forced clipping and specific timings that had to be accounted for while dealing with the clunkiness of pets. It nearly commits every single fluidity and functional mistake that MCH does now in Stormblood, but it was in a far better state comparatively because it wasn't nearly as punishing. You could deal with mis-alignment and Contagion actually was bearable back then. And even back then it was considered clunky by players at the time, myself included. The difference is instead of needing to rework half the kit from the ground up again like MCH needs right now, it only needed two changes at the time; a way to weave Aetherflow in during DWT without clipping your GCD or a major DPS loss, and the removal of the timer on DWT. Everything else was gravy. MCH has heat generation problems. MCH's Overheat and Wildfire timers leave you little room to actually adapt. They have to deal with Flamethrower being the only oGCD that roots you in place while you use it that also requires you to actively use it in your full rotation. They have to deal with Rapidfire clipping. They have to make sure they're aligned with TA perfectly. And they have only 10 seconds in their most important burst window They have to deal with gear optimization no other class does because too much skill speed actually hurts their overall damage at certain breakpoints because of all of the above.

None of that addresses your changes at all, however. I'll rattle them off.

Turrets should be affected by every buff except magic damage. Hypercharge does not need to be a copy of Foes. Same reasons as outlined above. The current Hypercharge is fine. Bard needs to be toned down anyways. Overdrive does not need a nerf, which by the sounds of what you've described is your intent, in order to make the skill something you only use before any downtime. It should resummon the turret automatically after the debuff wears off, even I could see removing that penalty on it or removing the skill entirely before SE ever fixes snapshotting. Flamethrower will probably never get the changes you describe, because SE hates making anything tick at a rate higher than one second, and even with that I don't think the changes help with how Flamethrower is used. Right now it's the only thing that lets MCH enter overheat that's oGCD at all and I think one way you could solve the heat problem is by simply letting Flamethrower instantly put you in Overheat rather than all the awkward fiddling you did with its heat generation. Granularity does help but in a lot of ways in this case speed is the real issue.

I appreciate the extra turret commands you added, Gauss Barrel's rework into a trait is something everyone agrees on. The addition of Detonate can help in specific instances, and Rapid Fire's overall changes are good. Those are small things that can happen within a reasonable time frame. I would suggest reverting heat to the old system and adding heat reduction options to Gauss Round/Ricochet and potentially removing the heat generation from Clean Shot. Something still needs to be done about Overheat as well but personally I hope SE actually increases the duration of Wildfire and Overheat to make them easier to use. You do this to some extent but not enough imo. The window is already super tight and anything you can do to widen it more than the bare minimum to accomodate your Rapidfire change helps high ping players out a ton specifically.

I'd argue that Hot Shot should carry the piercing debuff instead of a damage bonus and grant 50 Heat (with ammo bypassing it as usual), which eliminates that DRG dependency and the heat bonus helps with most of MCH's problems in a much better way. Barrel Stabilizer doesn't really have a purpose outside of deaths or as a mid-cycle heat managment tool as a result of that. Overheat itself really needs to be changed to only begin its timer once you've used a weaponskill at 100 heat. Reaching 100 Heat in any manner, including using Flamethrower, still puts you in that Overheated state, meaning you can't use Cooldown to exit out of it, but the timer doesn't start until you use another weaponskill. It seems unnecessary, but it would also help alleviate the currrent skill speed issue a bit as well, and if don't want to mess with the current Heat mechanics at all, I'd recommend it over any of my other suggestions precisely because it and the Flamethrower change solve most of these problems.

I do have some thoughts on Monk specifically, but mostly under the general opinion that positionals need rethinking on melee DPS, and it's the class that needs the most work in that regard. What I'm suggesting is relatively minor, however. I'm tossing it out mostly because of mentioning Deep Meditation earlier, as I have a proposed rework for that trait, Meditation, and a couple weaponskills. The weaponskills in question are simply the Coeurl Form single target skills. Drop the positional requirements on those, and only those. My idea for Deep Meditation is to split up the Chakra Gauge into two halves, light and shadow. Making a flank attack would fill up the guage with Light Chakra, and back attacks would fill up with Shadow Chakra. This would be true regardless of the positional requirements of the attacks themselves, but for flexibility's sake, the positional requirements on the Coeurl Form skills have to be removed to facilitate this, bare minimum. With that in mind, Deep Meditation also alters Meditation, which now essentially grants 1.5 Chakra with each use, prioritizing whichever half is lower, and picking randomly between them if they're equal. This is a buff, but it also removes the scaling factor from MNK's crit rate from the equation.

[Shurrikhan]

That's not how this math works. 3 is not 20% of 12, and 6 is not 40% of 9. You can't get an RA proc off of an RA, so you need to count Heavy Shots, not GCDs.

Yup. My brainfart and inability to edit upon noticing it there. (The forums kicked me out for not being logged in in two weeks despite being on 4 days ago after resubbing.) 2.4 RAs and 3.6 respectively, albeit at a total of a fractional GCD.

No, that's not how it works at all. The first tier is shorter (17 iirc), the rest are all 66 or 67, averaging 66.66, which makes sense because Det averages 166.66 for +1% flat. DH is only not-41.66 because it'd be "strictly" worse than Det if it was.

Typo again. I meant to say per 1%. The very first 1%, which includes that mini-step of 17 on most jobs (though as much as 51 at some GCD modifiers, e.g. FW-GL3), can be as low as 118 on my Speed-buffed jobs, or 84 on others.

The jobs that most often has me consulting the GCD Calculator, Monk and Samurai, alternate between a cost of 150 (i.e. 899 at 2 1049 at 1.98 for Monk at 1633 at 1783 at 1.98 for SAM) on any GCD gap which divides cleanly and 166-168 on any gap which does not in order to move down 1% Skill Speed. That's a little awkward. That's why I suggested the simple 1% per 160, or 4 Materia, rather that 150/167/166/150/167/167 going down the steps.

When? It's pretty normal for SE not to mess with substats mid-expac, so in terms of evaluating what they're doing the last relevant point is the start of 4.0. At that time they nerfed Crit (lowered the base crit multiplier), made SkS more nonsense as described, and replaced Accuracy with the very boring Direct Hit.

There was a small buff to Critical Hit, iirc, about the same time Holy Spirit was nerfed a second time? Idk, I was a PLD main at the time so though I had my Monk and Bard alts at 70 it didn't affect me as much at the time. I just remember breathing a sigh of relief that at some point in this expansion I could share gear sets between SAM and MNK without loss, whereas the Critical Hit required previously would have push me back, at minimum, into the third raid tier before Crit would outperform DHit on my SAM.

But fair enough. Even with that buff Critical Hit isn't as strong as it was in Heavensward. Though, I suspect the change in Heavensward itself was made in part to reduce Bard scaling just as much as to introduce less relative value fall-off on Critical Hit itself. If it was truly just the latter, they overshot by a lot, but trading Critical Hit chance in part for Critical Hit power is a boon only for Bard's Straight(er) Shot while a loss to its central mechanic, which quite a few people held as an example of rampant growth (alongside, ofc, BLM stat-scaling and early SkS's initially lower cost-per-percent at extreme values on Monk, especially among Lucretia and the like).

I don't much see why the .66 ending would be intended. If anything, it seems like it would have to be a vestigial consequence from leveling up that was probably tuned to arrive at a flat value at level 60 and was just left as is going into SB... 25 sharp was the average .01 GCD SkS value cost back at 50, and it was around 40, iirc, at 60. But that would have placed us at 64 now if that was the only trend. Then again, secondaries fade off more sharply after each level cap it seems, by more than expansion-BiS gear to greens over time would explain, so idk.

The effort overall is in the direction of making substats as non-distinct as possible - three that increase damage with different variance, and speed that's just kind of there because it feels like it ought to be, with a bunch of asterisks applied to it to make it more like the 'just increase damage' stats. Your suggestion is to continue this and make SkS even more of a 'just increase damage' stat.

Yes, but only because of something I see as fundamental: even if consolidation into %damage is not a developer priority, consideration of each stat as %damage will always be a community priority. Thus you end up with either of two outcomes:
1. Imbalanced Stats - One playstyle permitted, without even minute adjustments allowed. Stack best stat and avoid worst stat as you progress, often skipping over inferior secondary stat pieces even in would-be upgrade tiers.
2. Balanced Stats - Pick a rate of action by which to permit your favored macrorotation, prioritizing pure damage via Crit (where mechanically favored) or flexibility via Speed (at slightly less stacked pure damage). Balance stat intake to maintain your preferred playstyle, while taking the contextually better remaining stats over the contextually inferior, balancing this time between pure damage (DHit) and utility (DHit cannot increase self-healing).

I prefer the second. Choice is only permitted when balance is close enough.

You can think of each stat as working like the suggested Battle Voice. Each provides equal damage contribution, but then some "Additional Effect".
160 Speed - Increases damage by 1%. Additional Effect: instead effects rate where possible, allowing for greater flexibility in rotation and more GCDs within a given window of opportunity.
160 Determination - Increases damage by 1%. Additional Effect: increases (self)-healing dealt by the same.
160 Direct Hit - Increases damage dealt by 1%. Additional Effect: synergizes with Critical Hit. Bonus damage has a chance proportionate to damage to trigger certain effects on Monk/Bard.
160 Critical Hit - Increases damage dealt by 1%. Additional Effect: synergizes with Direct Hit and auto-criticals (more so than DHit). Bonus damage has a chance proportionate to damage to trigger certain effects on Monk/Bard.

And I'm fine with that, if only because that way we actually have choices and get to experience different playstyles as offered by the existing breakpoints of our jobs. The discussion isn't mitigated -- it's expanded. With jobs capable of further breakpoints allowed to choose which they want, you now get to discuss and weigh the benefits of each. Maintaining our favored playstyle or being pushed into some new macrorotation and looking for advise on its idiosyncrasies still offers plenty of discussion in the course of gear progression as well.

It kind of sounds like what you really want here are talents - that is, you want substats to represent options that can impact how a job plays, so you want SkS to be viable for everyone since asking for a proper talent system is unrealistic.
However, as you likely know, YoshiP opposes talents because he opposes player choice when it comes to how a job plays. "False choice" and all that. They'd be equally opposed to trying to make substats a real decision. So if you want talents, you might as well just talk about how they could add talents in a non-awful way, instead of trying to backdoor the matter with Skill Speed.

I don't remotely consider this a backdoor approach to talents. I don't like talents. I just one stat that I've been willing to test at every amount possible under i390 despite some throughput loss as having genuine gameplay appeal and find it more than a little disappointing that it's only permitted to two jobs. I don't consider the particular breakpoints it brings as false choices. So long as the stat was generally balanced, in the current contexts of the jobs, they could scarcely be more real or tightly aligned. All it takes is for Speed to apply the same nominal effectiveness as the other stats and one would naturally tend towards any of several rotation-deciding breakpoints. Will every point of Speed be as effective as Determination? No. Some will be more, in hitting from A to B, and some less, for falling short. It should still be planned out. But without compensation for % oGCD damage, which can only otherwise be made by adjusting the cost-per-percent on a job-by-job basis (with the already purely GCD-based BLM benefiting from Speed the slowest), all that planning is largely wasted just due to the stat being "stack maximally" or "avoid like lepers". It needs a stack to A, then optionally B for this functional bonus, then optionally C for this super fun window-of-opportunity bonus, then optional meme-speed D that flips everything on its head.

As for talents, I don't think that kind of system -- in any form we can draw examples from beyond maybe certain Rift patches or cherry-picked highlights of WotLK's systems -- provides good customization or player choice as relevant to endgame. In my opinion it's less a tool for customization than immersion. So, no, I'm not doing this to create talents in some awkward manner. I'm doing this because it seems an obvious opportunity that has currently gone to waste.

[such that you now have a fifth substat (more gear differentiation)]

I don't think having a fifth substat necessarily means more gear differentiation. Again, I'm more of the opinion that Direct Hit is pointless, design-wise.

Or perhaps you think talent points could be on gear, such that you now have a fifth substat (more gear differentiation) and players would need to weigh whatever value they get from talents versus the substat.

But... that does sound decently cool. I'm not a huge fan of the theorycrafting required for that, especially within this community, but it's a neat enough concept.

I'd think that'd be too mathy for the average player who doesn't know the nuts and bolts, but maybe SE would find that sort of obfuscation to be a positive.

Too much for them to understand their actual value? Probably. To get hyped for it? Not at all. There almost seems to be an inverse relationship between hype and understanding. Or at least SE seems to think so.

I just hope that if anything like that occurs, it occurs in gameplay-significant chunks -- like Jump's CD being reduced by 10 seconds, the new 20s CD still syncing with the every 2nd 30s Geirskogul with huge repercussions down the line... which isn't too likely if the opportunity cost is merely that of our normally none-too-noticeable secondary stats. It would be more likely to occur as Regalia, or Relic Armor, as a highlight feature of some expansion, and where the total Regalia to be equipped are limited but their talents therefore only contrasted with each other as to allow them very real power.