Balance, Homogenisation and Encounter Design: The Problem.

[Barraind]

14 hurts itself badly by using 4 person groups and 8 person raids.

It loses a massive amount of design space by that size, even compared to Wow's 10mans. You're locked out of entire raid concepts because you have to balance around a number of people that cant logistically handle things.

Similarly, a lot of group design theory dies even going from 6 people to 5, let alone going to 4.

Its one reason tanks and healers HAVE to be blue and green dps, you cant design functional encounters around requiring those classes to be in full tank and heal mode without being able to cheese the hell out of it with competent dps and 1 tank 1 healer'ing it.


In terms of class homogenization, with everything using potency, 14 is in one fo the easiest positions to get damage numbers similar while keeping classes mechanically different.

That it takes as long as it does for even minor potency tweaks in situations where its an obvious necessity, and we instead watch classes lose more and more of their identity, is a massive warning sign about the core competencies of the design team.