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

[Shurrikhan]

Aggro dumps are not meant for the opener to begin with. They're for mid-fight aggro management.

I have to agree with this. While obvious dumps remove more aggro over time than aggro mitigation, that was rarely ever the problem. Ultimately, all enmity comes down to the issue of whether or not a tank has to give up DPS. Mitigation is more consistently effective in this matter where it tends to matter most, especially given Circle-Shirking thereafter.

Hell, in single-tank scenarios if I know it'll time out safely enough, I've... a couple times let my SAM take aggro for the .75 seconds it takes to Shirk him and then Voke the aggro back without the guy taking a single melee. At worst I tend to loose a Bloodspiller in TA in place of a DA-Souleater during the next tank swap.

I personally consider 'competing' with Refresh to mean that any single caster DPS is able sustain Mana Shifts in order to provide the same benefit Refresh does to a single healer.

Fair enough. I just for whatever reason consider things almost only in the context of their compositions, even while I make suggestions trying to free up said compositions to allow for a more job-by-job selection. My bad there.

While your boost to the % MP difference and cooldown would in theory close that gap to two caster DPS, it would only do so provided your healers were willing to meld or gear for extra Piety.

I don't want to require Piety. Let me consider how much more I can reasonably buff it, then.

Sidenote: Complete bias pipedream here, but I'd like for Mana Shift to also see utility for padding BLM dps or the like -- maybe SMN too if it starts turning into a veritable variable mana hog again. Like, bonus Flares and an extra Fire IV + guaranteed instant MP-sufficiency for spell following B3 kind of stuff. But... I also don't want to see it be too punishing for the caster, and I don't want it to noticeably "create" MP; it should still be an actual shift. That's just my preference though.

Ultimately, the better solution to this is for SE to make every class self-sufficient when it comes to their resources as part of the TP/MP consolidation next expansion.

I so hope that's the case. Hitting a button every two minutes is just not even gameplay to me. I'd much prefer to see Lucid Dreaming become unnecessary and its threat dump component turned into a temporary aggro dump with an included decently heft heal (50% shield on overheal).

Piety in its current state is a comfort stat, not a desirable one, and that's the real problem. It needs a rework, perhaps as a pure healing potency boost. As long as SE tries to keep Piety around in its current state as a balancing mechanism for healer resources rather than giving healers themselves the tools they need to handle their own MP (preferably treating Lucid as an option not as a requirement), then a Bard or Machinist is always going to be a part of the best party composition, since that's going to allow healers to strip it out of their gear as much as possible.

Piety is something I'd been meaning to ask healer friends about, but all my closest had gone DPS or tanks this xpac and fixing it seems a whole lot less straightforward that Skill/Spell Speed. Personally I want to remove it unless we can also get a mechanic that enhances spell power based on remaining %MP or whatnot, which would only be -- if ever -- after the removal of personal MP-on-CD skills, and would feel awfully gimmicky even then except as a unique job mechanic which it can't be because then a stat that everyone is forced to use at least someone would still be shit for 2 of 3 or 3 of 4 healers and tiers high in Piety on BiS would then favor said healer.

I'm less worried about it, because those edge case synergies are part of what is making Bard mandatory in the first place, making it pretty clear to me that it should be removed, or perhaps given its own resource as a replacement (such as charging up the ability by rotating between songs as an example). People will play what they thematically like unless the implementation is complete garbage or the balance is too far out of whack.

Totally true. I just, again, for whatever reason thought that so long as for now we're going to be using MP on one, which is cool in that you could time it to whatever composition so long as the initiation cost is negligible (e.g. no GCD used to start it)... I might as well let both have that side-benefit while fixing the imbalance between them. I thought the two-birds-one-stone aspect would be worth the time getting the better angle.

Hell, I'm fine with MCH being the 'selfish' DPS of the pair too, provided that actually meant something.

Selfish DPS as in does more on its own (pDPS) or is like "Give me all your synergies, my minions!"? I've always based it on the latter and therefore though of it as Bard... I kid, but anyways...

I just don't see the point in keeping a mana drain song around given what we know.

Yep, fair enough. Though I still really hope they can just do away with per-weaponskill costs entirely instead of TP just being renamed to MP and MP, essentially, being removed, if that's the way of all this. I really hate having such little info on this.

I'd so much rather see a "support" DPS's resource go towards supporting, not just... doing what it always does in a way that never costs it anything anyways.

Last I recall Cure's base MP cost something like 4 while Raise is 20, at level 0 that is. I do get the idea, but I have to wonder if SE's just gonna give everyone TP and be done with it rather than continuing this system.

Iirc, back when we had Refresh "potency" (something like 80 for SS/LA and 60 for MB, iirc), that, too was based on the cost of the class's basic heal, before mitigating auras (like AST's). Idk, it's been a weird system, to the point that simply switching to 10000 MP from level 1 onward, all the time, for everyone, would no longer shock me. It would feel kinda... wrong, for an RPG though, if that makes sense. We expect HP and MP to always increase together. I'm not sure how I'd feel about that.

Clipping in the manner that BLM would have to honestly winds up costing them 2-3 GCDs over a fight even on average ping, potentially a whole AF rotation if you use macros.

I'd rather not balance something on the assumption that someone's crippling themselves with macros. Come 5.0 I'd love to see macros allow for queuing, but I'd like to special targeting and reasonable consolidation as not to need macros.

Special Targeting: Interact (via Right-Click on M&KB or whatever on controller it takes to get to the "Remove, ..." context menu on Controller) with a hotbar skill or macro to choose from among "Target - Mouseover - Focus Target - Target of Target - Previous Target - Specified Target - Specified Target's Target". Click what you want and then click away for just that targeting procedure, or click in series in order to control what target it will attempt first, second, third, fourth, etc. You can specify player slots via Player 1 (self), Player 2, Player 3, etc., or by Role via Tank 1, Tank 2, Healer 2, etc. Thus, you can have your Stone IV just spam on your tank's target at all times when no viable target is selected (but your tank is), or on your focus target, or whatever.
For Ground AoEs, you'll also see the toggle option between "Target and Select" and "Cast on Release".

Reasonable Consolidation: Basically just what's already in the suggestions applied to whatever skills in 5.0 are likewise mutually exclusive and have reason to be designed as such rather than being revised (so more like Jump<>Mirage Dive, less like Heavy Shot<>Refulgent Arrow).

BLM really just needs a reliable way to weave that isn't worse than using F1 or doesn't cost MP to use, perhaps both.

This wouldn't be applicable to every GCD, exactly, but imagine if Enochian and Fire IV / Blizzard IV had been revised slightly differently. Rather than F4 and B4 being reduced a flat .2 seconds cast time, to 2.8 from 3.0, Enochian instead reduces cast times (not recast times, to be clear) by 10%. Voila, F4 and B4 now have a 2.7 cast time (and face small nerfs, mostly to draw in F4 just a tad further than I'd already suggested*), and Fire, Thunder III, and Foul see even more oGCD gap, rather than getting its benefits only on F3, B3, Thundercloud, and Firestarter. *A BLM can break 10k DPS now (with over 8k tDPS), to the point that Arrow viably could be better spent on the single BLM than spread to the full party, which is awesome but a bit ridiculous, especially if we want the space to improve BLM in other ways.

I'll admit that I'm partial to adding it on the Ranged DPS because keeping it has some merit to it in multi-dot and multi-target scenarios, but SE seems determined to phase out situations like that as much as possible.

I have the same preference. I'd love to see it applicable on Hot Shot or Straight Shot or a procced Clean Shot or (mutatis mutandis) Straighter Shot, and maybe Fleche.

I've just had it vehemently beaten out of me through every which strawman elsewhere to the point I'm wondering that if there's so much that can be twisted in talking about it, surely the mechanic has to have more convolution than complexity. In which case, is it worth it? I don't know. I'd say if I could more with the mechanic, absolutely, but as it stands, maybe not. If the devs turn it into a false ultimatum between, say, being able to quickly applying vuln to just enough targets for AoE spam to be worthwhile before starting the AoE spam (or, say, -mutatis mutandis- holding RA until Disembowel is applied to the new add a GCD later) and all the compositional dependence we have now, I'd have to favor freer comps over what I few bits I really enjoy about the mechanic.

[QUOTE]My only concern with [dash-skill mid-dash WASD control for adjusted destinations] is it would likely be as clunky as Rescue despite not having another target and translating it onto an input other than from controllers would be odd to fit in.
Yeah. That may well be the case. Again, pipedream stuff. Being able to dash forward and land on the flank or behind the target when starting from an angle where the boss was facing you, so long as the flank/back is within the dash range, or even just as stacked movement opportunity, just seems so satisfying a possibility...

I've got my own biases too. Hell I'd love it if Monk or Dragoon had a fixed distance AoE charge as an oGCD, but I also agree that it would be completely impractical.

That's actually what I wanted Doomspike to be, though as a GCD still, back in ARR. Or Trammel, if that 1.x skill was returned. Or Lancet, if we ever tossed that back into the arsenal. I wanted my target-less AoE mini-dash. I could see it on Monk as well.

Or especially SAM. 5.0 ability, Flash of Steel. Every TA window your SAM is dashing back and forth through the boss between GCDs. Eventually one doesn't turn in time and, boss being held at the edge already, goes off into oblivion.

I don't trust SE with that kind of idea to begin with. I overthink these things too because I like to analyze it, but your reasoning makes sense to me. Hell I miss potential reasons why things are the way they are too. Someone in my static tonight theorized that the reason why AST cant stack regens with another AST is likely because that one quirk (whether buffs are allowed to stack of now) is assigned to the buttons themselves, not the buffs. If that were true, then in order for the regens to stack then their shields would have to be allowed to as well, which is an example of the kind of engine baggage that is nigh impossible to fix without specifically dedicating someone to it for a patch and making sure it doesn't break everything else.

I sure hope that's not the case, but shared recast timers across different jobs -- such that I could end up with a 5- or 7-minute CD on my Meditation skill back in HW, iirc -- makes me hesitant to doubt that level of baggage.

I can appreciate that kind of thing too but to me backloading or ramp up fits a personal ability better. Flat-lining the buff allows it to be moved to a more comfortable position as well without any major hiccups.

Oh, I fully get that. It's why I prefer Brotherhood to not have a damage component applicable to the Monk himself, just to give that slightly increased comfort space that allows Brotherhood to perform its main function (giving you more bppm via free TFCs) more easily. I just, for whatever reason, really like it on Embolden. To me the ramp up is fun to plan out against, both personally and for the whole team (or at least, in a PuG, standard openers), to faintly adjust otherwise standard openers for, and it feels thematic to me that something called Embolden would have you getting progressively... bolder. Wholly subjective stuff going on there.

And in terms of tension, I'd rather have some inherent flexibility in how I manage my resources and let the tension arise from managing them according to each fight's mechanics, which this game in general does not inherently support on any DPS class other than SMN currently (arguably SAM too, but they're more about rotation management than cooldowns).

To me at least those concerns are basically the same. I view damage bonus windows and uptime windows in the exact same sort of sync-and-max-effective-casts-in-fight perspective, so to mean the compositional concerns just augment what the fight is throwing onto me. How many TAs can we get in this fight if on 5th GCD or -- bear with me here -- 2nd? It's fun to me when raid buffs can get thrown a loop a bit because of the fight, and rotations in turn with those raid buffs.

My favorite tension manipulator is SpeedSAM, easily. The extra space to bank a Yuki or Iajutsu for a bad position or for better throughput within a coming TA or MKSS or whatnot is brilliant. But I feel like what it provides would be lessened if not for concerning myself with raid buffs.

SMN:

I know enough to say that SE could use buffs to effectively override a pet's default AI behavior in a way that feels at least more consistent than what we have now, but even I'll admit it's a hack job, and fixing the underlying system governing pets would be massively better in the long run.

Agreed. And since I don't have the coding experience to point out what's probably the big issue, I've just been favoring pulling my hair out over how to hack-job it with a silent plea throughout my efforts for the underlying system to be fixed.

To me, the choice you have in picking which Aetherflow abilities to use each cycle is the only real meaningful decision to make. Accelerating the opener isn't all that interesting in practice because of this. In this situation ED replaces Painflare if you really need to do so mid-fight, but the lower cooldown in the opener and the potency loss for having to use ED over Painflare is enough to push it out of common use. I'm of the opinion that SMN needs an aetherflow ability to use during jump phases too to solve the problem of having nothing to do during those phases, much like Monk had in ARR. I'd also be fine with Bane and ED sharing the same cooldown, but held off on it since only Fester & Painflare need that consolidation to accomplish that goal. A similar rebalance could also be applied to SCH as well, with Indom getting toned down to compensate for sharing Lustrate's cooldown.

I guess, again, I just don't really see the purpose? Generally it rotates in the manner you're encouraging as is. We just lose the potential for specialized burst in, say, dungeon environments. Moreover, what if a phase were to last almost exactly n minutes and then have downtime for over a minute? (Very extreme hypothetical situation, I know.) You'd no longer be reasonably able to blow all your AF abilities so that you can get the last AF set off because of the shared recast timers. CD reduction (from individual 5 to shared 2, etc.) on PF is only really OP if it's spent entirely on PF. SMN doesn't need more burst AoE. It just might occasionally need (to retain) the ability to rapidly spend its AF skills.

As for the downtime bit, a quick question for you:
How would you imagine SMN might work or be adjusted if AF was not a cooldown, but could still be passively generated without any of the issues one might first assume from lacking manual control? (At most, only the opener would be affected?) If we could figure that out, I think it would be easier to imagine how it might handle downtime better.

That or... maybe they could consider making SMN a serious mana-hog again and allow for ED to be used without a target, though still able to deal damage if there is one, and give back a bit more MP (making it more viable in low eDPS periods where spending can't be banked any further, high but short eDPS periods, and during downtime)?

Sorry, not much by way of gut ideas here.

That line was specifically referring to the current Bane's reduced damage over time potency. The current version has the second enemy take 80% of the original DoT's damage. The third enemy takes 60%, the fourth 40%, and all remaining enemies take 20%. I lopped off that last step, to make every enemy take a minimum of 40% of the original DoT's damage, which is twice as much as it does now.

Yup. I missed something very obvious there. Sorry.

Yeah, the intent was to improve on the micro management of HW Ruin III without having to drain your MP in the process. The result is messy for sure.

I'm understanding more of your thinking behind it, but I'm still no sold on it. It feels like something that seems about done, just needing polish, but could well end up wanting a different chassis by next week.

Whoops. For Enkindle Bahamut, I meant it should replace Enkindle during Summon Bahamut, not DWT. It doesn't really accomplish anything other than removing the button entirely, admittedly, so I suppose I should keep it seperate and only allow it to be used during Bahamut, or perhaps treating it as Enkindle II could work. I'm torn on that because I'd like to tone down the burst provided by Bahamut to allow more room for his phase to be improved further in 5.0. On that note, Deathflare isn't usable during Summon Bahamut either.

Ahh, okay, that makes a bit more sense. Actually, either one way did, but the one aesthetic issue I mentioned would now be gone. I guess you could say it's just a matter of where to put the skill? DWT, when available, replaces Rouse now, right? From there I'd recommend using the same key for Deathflare itself, seeing as you might want to use Enkindle during DWT, but as long as you're in DWT, you'd have no other use for that key. If DWT is mutually exclusive with Summon Bahamut upon gaining two cycles of Dreadwyrm Aether, then it too could use the same button for both Summon Bahamut and Enkindle Bahamut, which would probably feel more comfortably located, given that it's used potentially a bit more often than Enkindle, than Enkindle itself would be.

I'd need to know more about what kind of skills you'd like to see with 5.0 before I could offer even any spitball ideas.

BRD:

I guess my concern now is, does that timer keep ticking even if you get a proc? Or does it reset like it would in Ballad?

I guess I was late in editing this in or somehow the change on scrapped. Think of it like a clock that awards you a free Repertoire stack every time it comes around (once per BL/RoD CD, which is to say 6 GCDs), but freezes if you already have 3/3 stacks. Once you spend stacks, the timer is consumed, the bonus stack applied, and clock resumes spinning. Thus it cannot bank over 3 stacks.

The basic idea is it acts as the AoE counterpart to Wanderer's Minuet, being the strongest song at that role, but incredibly weak as a single target song to the point that Paeon and Ballad outstrip it. The easiest way to accomplish this within your paradigm would be to nerf Rain of Death's potency to 80 (to weaken Ballad relative to it) and move Dissonance over to this song, with Bloodletter being disabled for its duration while Rain of Death would be disabled for WM's duration. I believe that should allow your version of Paeon to outstrip it in single target but maybe not AoE (Again, Twin Bolt/Arrow Helix are really good), but that's me going off of intuition rather than hard numbers.

The only reason for wanting this in the first place is to make picking between the four songs somewhat meaningful in order to accomodate keeping all four of them in the current rotation. WM and Foes would be specialized, while Paeon and Ballad would be filler, with Paeon specifically being tuned to be better than either of the specialized songs at their weakest areas while still being worse than Ballad, meaning you'll drop Paeon between each RS window if you get an opportunity to use both of your specialized songs fully instead. All it really does is change your song rotation from fight to fight if SE makes that worthwhile to have, but I suspect they won't.

I definitely see the attraction there, but I have to admit, I wouldn't want it without a flexible system (like the MP drain idea to keep song usage in check but in a far more flexible manner). And even then I'd probably like to see song synergies linger beyond their own timings. At that point though, I still think as long as AP could offer something of its own we'd be fine with just three, not that I'd be necessarily opposed to a fourth. I guess I just don't like the idea of them having to be, when looking for unique song advantages, mirror images of sorts. For instance, as long as we're never going to see a return to real support functions in songs, I'd love to see WM as the "it's/they're all ready to drop; let it/them have it", MB as the "cry havoc", and AP as the "guy with all the connections / prep-expert / specialized specialist" song.

Mashing Bloodletter/RoD in Ballad is the busiest moment for sure, but priming PP in WM while keeping EA and Bloodletter rolling is also distinct enough in flow, while the brief but important downtime in Paeon is a key part in giving the player some breathing room. Having less to press overall and maintaining the same rate of presses throughout each song other than Ballad just winds up taking away from what distinguishes its rotation, yet I also agree that it's hard to make it any busier in a meaningful manner.

I do definitely understand that. It was not my intention to remove the gap in apm or whatnot between the songs. What I offered Paeon I doubled up on in Ballad; I wanted Ballad to be almost laughably frenetic. I wasn't aiming to make Paeon higher apm so much as just fun in its own way. That extra GCD per six, in two ways, seemed... fun to me. I just really love the idea of going into a three-high-HP-mobs cleave fight in some new raid, popping AP, DoTing them all up simultaneously with AH-WB for quick haste, DoTing each for real with said haste and TB-DoT, getting off a AH-Refulgent and AH-EA before they're forced to split, swapping to WM before the EA's Rep bonus hits, Dissonance, Dissonance, Dissonance -- "shit, they're split now and all but one is immune to my effects, but at least I'm way on top of the meters... time to pick one to annihilate it til mass-DoTs drop off." That just seems adorable, giddiness-inducing fun to me. The APM was just a byproduct of aiming for those kinds of opportunities.

If I was gonna do anything to make Paeon's downtime more meaningful without adding more buttons, I'd say make it into the HW throwback song. Let it buff your GCDs up by some meaningful amount and add cast times back into them for that period that the repetroire stacks then gradually remove.

That'd be fair, too. Though, personally (yep, wholly subjectively), that feels more thematically close to WM to me. I mean it's all about readying those huge shots, right? So, if I had to diversify further, I'd probably connect what PP does now into a more general mechanic and really flesh that out throughout WM, while Ballad would be wholly frenetic, and Paeon the bastard specialist.

It could be used in a similar vein as EA to proc a bunch of Repertoire stacks, but I don't think it needs to be a carbon copy to accomplish that. Altering the cooldown so it's say, 20-25s baseline and gives two stacks instead while retaining its AoE cone component would be enough. Yeah, it adds another button to manage and double weave, But it also adds to Bard's resource tracking without being as overwhelming as your Ballad change, since it's ultimately predictable by the player. And while I sometimes find it frustrating that Bard has to keep track of all these small cooldowns, I have to admit that the primary appeal of Bard is the fact that it is so busy as a result of having to track those small cooldowns within the different pace of each song.

Makes sense. To be fair, I'm just very, very cautious about adding additional on-CD oGCDs, because I feel like if they're just more or less raw damage -- no matter their potency -- they tend to feel like HW Leg Sweep on bosses. I'd prefer to more largely differ the pace of (or, more importantly, the feeling of pace supplied by) fewer skills than add additional skills to vary the pace. If I have to resort to the latter, I will, I just don't think it's there yet. All this is still far from polished, after all -- been busy lately.

MCH:

It's kinda impossible to avoid with Overdrive in general. Calculating that kind of damage boost would have to be done in a similar way as Wildfire, where it's incremented over time. That makes Hypercharge the better candidate to pre-empt such an ability, similar to what you had in mind with Detonate letting you end Wildfire early. It would take too long to crunch in order to be done instantly, and adding a delayed check to ensure it was calculated right just nerfs the potential damage further unless you're able to pre-empt your party's raid buff usage in order to maximize the value of it.

Would it be, though? I would suspect you could pre-calculate the buffs in play and turret relative dps somewhat so that you need only hit the ability, the animation starts, and the ratios are determined, with all RNG bonus elements normalized to raw % bonus damage.

It would be easier just to leave it as is and retune the damage and debuff timer according to where you feel it ought to be, and maybe so it's specifically bad except when you have downtime in a fight the same way Tornado Kick was originally supposed to be.

True, but if possible I'd rather MCH feel free to burst as it wills. It'd remain obligatory before a jump, but you *could* use it elsewhere. It's not a big deal to me either way; I just feel like that tech is bound to be useful again at some point, even if not here on MCH.

Not by much, admittedly. MCH would absolutely use Hot Shot for Piercing early in their opener though, since they can do it without expending heat if they wanted to. With the 50 Heat addition they could intentionally use a variation of the 2 ammo opener so they can use a combination of it and Barrel Stabilizer to instantly Overheat on the 3rd or 4th GCD, which is potentially useful. It has some surprising ramifications. Using it mid fight basically requires you to use Cooldown or Ammo on it though, which is a downside, but one that adds some stress to overall Heat management. The downside is the potential to proc Overheat every single Reload, which is a big issue admittedly, but doing so without all the 1-minute cooldowns to tip it over does make a huge difference in how viable that really is. I believe it's actually close to not being worth it because of the lost heated shots, enough that a 3-5% nerf on the Overheat boost that's then shifted into Wildfire would be enough to discourage using it twice every minute entirely, without impacting the WF window itself.

I will come back to this after I've slept to ensure I'm not missing anything more than I normally would. I'm still not seeing the gameplay benefits quite enough to warrant such a huge Heat dump on demand.

MNK:

<Snip.>
The original intent with the idea was to remove all the positional requirements from Monk without really removing them, by using this system as the replacement for traditional positionals entirely.
<Snip.>
In general I'm for positional mechanics that let you be more flexible without entirely eliminating their requirements, or if they're explicit, then minimizing the time they have to be considered would be preferred.
<Snip.>

Okay, so now that I'm understanding this better, I'm doubly unsure as to whether I like it. If it completely replaces positionals, such that I'm free to use 2 Bootshines for every 1 DK, and reap the benefits thereof, at high speeds, I'm cool with it, although I'm not quite sure it warrants the added system just to be a positional-nullifier, or even that I want positions nullified. Honestly, most of my positional issues can be solved by my party simply stacking perfectly center inside the boss's hitbox, such that I can take Ahk Morns or whatnot even while hitting flank and back. That fixes all but those mechanics that would force us back away from the hitbox-center too soon to safely use it. Voila.

I'd actually like to see Demolish lose its positional, since we'd tend to be at the back anyways for it, and now we no longer have any free-positioned skill where we used to have one per 21 seconds and another per 30 (so long as it wasn't also within the same 21s period at lower speeds, or was at middle-high speeds), especially if Meditation was less shitty, but beyond that... it's not something I see a need for yet, and if I was going to go for a change, it'd be massive. (Yup, whole huge cohesive pipedream set for this. Ever since late ARR.)

Anyways... almost 8 AM. Insomnia's finally wearing off. Will edit later if I've forgotten anything, unless you've already replied by then.