Dear Naoki Yoshida and the Battle Development Team,

[Melorie]

I bet that Sch and Ast will keep being the meta, they are just more boring now.
Between three things that are pretty much the same, you'll pick the ones that have utility. Which is, currently, SCH and AST.

[ForteNightshade]

there is a minimal and small uproar and fear from the vocal minorities and not the vast population. Do not drag this out of proportion. most players are happy in chat and in game. There are people more excited to try out healers now that they are balanced. Healers are gonna increase. Your concerns are heard but fear not, SE made the best decisions.

love,

- the community

Meanwhile, I know a plenty of career healers looking to switch off to DPS. This is why anecdotes mean very little. What we do know is back when DRK released, people insisted this would increase the tank population. It didn't.

[Vahlnir]

Meanwhile, I know a plenty of career healers looking to switch off to DPS. This is why anecdotes mean very little. What we do know is back when DRK released, people insisted this would increase the tank population. It didn't.

With the tank changes, along with the addition of Gunbreaker, I do see the tank population increasing even if it's by a small margin. It's hard to say what the healing changes will do though. It appears that the changes they made were made with the intention of making it easier for players to get into healing, but will the potential new blood outweigh those deciding to leave? That is something that we will have to wait and see.

[Enla]

With the tank changes, along with the addition of Gunbreaker, I do see the tank population increasing even if it's by a small margin. It's hard to say what the healing changes will do though. It appears that the changes they made were made with the intention of making it easier for players to get into healing, but will the potential new blood outweigh those deciding to leave? That is something that we will have to wait and see.

What I don't understand about that is that this game has always been very easy on healers. People tend to bring their anxieties from other games here where they think they need to constantly be healing, but there's not really any fight in this game (baring maybe Ultimate and parties where everyone is constantly standing in the bad and giving the healers ulcers) that requires the amount of overhealing our new kits seem to be geared towards. It'll be interesting to see how they handle this going forward. Either the damage output is significantly increased, which would give reason for those anxieties, or they follow the ARR->HW->SB transition where it only gets a smidge more difficult each time. In which case more standing around for healers I guess. Yay?

[EriShvakh]

It appears that the changes they made were made with the intention of making it easier for players to get into healing

It doesn't make any sense though. Pure healing was never hard. And if you found yourself wondering what the rest of your buttons do, you are probably smart enough to learn current healers without a need to dumb them down.

[Niqote]

It doesn't make any sense though. Pure healing was never hard. And if you found yourself wondering what the rest of your buttons do, you are probably smart enough to learn current healers without a need to dumb them down.

Honestly, the 'hard' part about healing was never the abilities. It was learning how to watch your other party members and be able to dictate, without knowing them or maybe even experiencing the job they play; how much of your assistance they really need. This balance is the difference between over healing and someone being dead.

This won't change and so I believe it won't really influence the amount of users who love to heal.

[Sebazy]

I made a more detailed analysis elsewhere on this. It's probably worth mentioning it here as well though.

I honestly don't think it's a problem of SE not listening to the player base (although it's fair to assume a bit of a language barrier with more NA/EU specific feedback).

Rather, the problem is just the battle team has remained unchanged since ARR. I'm fairly confident that Sato was bought over from the initial launch and 3 new people were bought in to help him modernise combat and the classes from the mush that was 1.0.

This same 4 strong team has handled things ever since, meanwhile the load placed upon them has quite clearly ballooned beyond what they can seemingly keep on top of. It's getting to the stage where they are seemingly running out of fresh ideas or the time to actually balance and implement them. Thus some jobs get rushed and end up hitting the expansion with a resounding faceplant.

I can't really say if it's a case of Yoshida stubbornly believing that they are up to the job, if SE refuse to give him the funding he needs to hire in some fresh blood or even some other internal politics that's causing this. All I can say is that Shadowbringers isn't going to change this trend.

[Dzian]

It's getting to the stage where they are seemingly running out of fresh ideas or the time to actually balance and implement them.

I don't think it's a case of running out of ideas. I believe it's more a case of they've dumbed down and simplified so many things that they find themselves backed into a corner and have no room to expand or grow all those cool ideas simply wouldn't work because of how much they've already cut out and over simplified everything.

Every boss encounter in this game is essentially just a striking dummy with some heavily scripted dodge mechanics thrown in. Highly predictable and as such incredibly easy to handle. Bosses never adapt or react to what a party does they just continue to follow that exact same script every time.

Tanking has been trivialized to the point where it's press a cooldown every 45-60 seconds and that's it you've done your job... The reason why tanks focus so much on DPS is because what else are they going to do for the next 45 seconds??
Healing is basically the same. except in stead of pressing a cool down it's tossing a heal every 45-60 seconds.. and then they have nothing to do the rest of the time but dps...

DPS has been so heavily trivialized that is pretty much a preset rotation that never changes from one encounter to the next, hell if it wasn't for the inability to queue actions. people would quite easily macro there entire rotation and that macro would work in every fight...

What can the devs possibly do to expand this system and make it grow? Without some major changes not very much at all because they've backed them selves into a corner by dumbing everything down to a point where they cant possibly expand.

You could for example bring some classic FF status ailments into the picture. Slow paralyze, Blind, Oil. Confuse. and give jobs other areas to focus on other than dps..
However in the current state of the combat system that just wouldn't work. If a whm threw a paralysis on a boss and it procced on that bosses tank buster or next raid wide hit. you would quite literally break the entire fight because of it's highly scripted and predictable nature..

however if you were to randomize encounters you'd have room to incorporate these elements without breaking them. as paralyzing a tank buster would help but given that another one could technically come at any moment it wouldn't completely negate the risk of that damage. the same could be true of blind. if a big hit actually missed...

what you'd do here is create alternative ways in which players could interact with the battle and contribute to there party without arbitrarily defaulting to dps... if you randomized the encounters you'd also likely find healers healing more frequently because it wouldn't just be a case of 1 lustrate in 30 seconds is all I'm going to need...

Another option could be to rework positional bonuses so that they actually did something interesting and fun, Attack from the rear and break a bosses tail thus preventing him from using massive tail swipe cleaves, Or attack from a flank and you might wound a leg preventing dash mechanics from happening, Or break a weapon the boss is holding preventing them from shooting ranged attacks at people stood over there. Basically having fights that require different approaches and change according to your actions instead of just going into boss E and using the exact same rotation you just used in bosses A, B, C and D... but again this would require moving away from the tightly scripted and highly predictable encounters they've backed themselves into a corner with..

There's also jobs. and they pretty much are homogenized within there roles. i know some folks think the term is thrown around to much but the reality is they are all highly homogenized.

While it is true for example that a smn and blm may play slightly differently and both again play differently to a red mage. They are still homogenized classes. Each of them brings the same strengths and weaknesses to a party. its not as if a blm is weak at single target damage but excels at aoe and crowd control. where as smn may be weak at aoe, pretty good at crowd control while there egi rips single targets to shreds. they all have the same strengths and weaknesses to within a very small margin...

melee is the same you might expect a monk to excel at one on one but be lacking in aoe. where a dragoon may not be quite so strong or fast but with his longer range polearm might actually be able to crack several skulls at once,

same goes with tanks where they all share the same strengths and weakness again and again with healers...

every job is basically a jack of all trades master of none. and that pretty much makes them all homogenized because they all share the same strengths and weaknesses..

and thats another reason why they're backed into a corner and have no room to diversify or be creative..

look at tanks in 4.0 backed into the corner of being dps jobs the devs tried to get out of that corner said hey guys defense matters took away strength and tried to entice players with tenacity. and players just laughed at them and kept using 270 accessories pushing tanks right back into that corner..

[Jeeqbit]

simplified so many things that they find themselves backed into a corner and have no room to expand or grow all those cool ideas

You can have complex rotations or complex fights. It's going to be disastrous to have both. The more important thing is that the rotations are fun and in 5.0 they look like they will be.

Highly predictable and as such incredibly easy to handle. Bosses never adapt or react to what a party does they just continue to follow that exact same script every time.

Every fight in the game is a dance. Once it's muscle memory, of course it's "easy". It's foolish to proclaim to new players that fights are "easy", because they have not learned the dance yet and therefore it is still hard for them.

They could make fights random instead of scripted. I can only guess SE have their reasons for not doing that.

Tanking has been trivialized to the point where it's press a cooldown every 45-60 seconds and that's it

Tanking has been trivialised where it's needed to be. Blocking and autos not working from all directions and stance dancing which was too difficult for newer tanks to grasp. The bigger picture of the game is these sort of things need trivialising.

There is still positioning enemies into player AOE areas, keeping caster enemies packed together, facing the boss away to prevent cleaving, minimising movement for DPS' so they can do their positionals with minimal disruption, doing large pulls, utility like Cover to save people, provoking and shirking. All of which a brand new tank may have no clue about. A lot of tanks don't know what tank swapping is.

You could for example bring some classic FF status ailments into the picture. Slow paralyze, Blind, Oil. Confuse. and give jobs other areas to focus on other than dps..

Perhaps you don't hunt. Stolas puts you to sleep forcing you to consider reapplying DoTs before that happens. Mirka freezes you if you don't silence it. If you don't do mechanics Okina does a stun-knockback and applies lightning debuffs that kill a lot of players. L60 Pale Rider reflects all damage back at you at one point and still kills L70s to this day. These hunt bosses all come from dungeons and raids.

There's also jobs. and they pretty much are homogenized within there roles.

melee is the same you might expect a monk to excel at one on one but be lacking in aoe. where a dragoon may not be quite so strong or fast but with his longer range polearm might actually be able to crack several skulls at once

Then you get the problem of metas, where people will only choose people who main one Job, and exclude the rest. The only way to stop that being a problem is either make all jobs share the same level and gear, or homogenization.

If people had to choose a Job appropriate to the situation, they might not be very familiar with all 17 of their rotations, so they'd have to heavily simplify them.

[Zeonx]

its as I said expansion isn't out and people are going to pretend they have played it and giving input before even trying to class after the changes.

you never know you might like it but instead come here try to make devs change mind when release is already coming soon and expansion is done.

not going to happen, if they notice bad changes they'll deal with it on their own.