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

[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.