So after waiting for about 2 weeks to see the consequence of homogenization

[Connor]

I get the frustration, and I think it’s most apparent if you were playing one of the ‘utility jobs’ that got the shaft this expansion (Bard, Red Mage, Astrologian, Ninja, even Dancer arguably). As a Bard main every since 1.0 until now, I know just as much as anyone how disappointing it feels to play now, to the point that I’ve dropped it completely as my main job, which I honestly never thought I could do.

Why does only one job get to be the ‘support oriented job’? I mean, imagine if it was like this for any other role. If they deleted Battle Litany and Dragon Sight from Dragoon, Mantra and Brotherhood for Monk. Then give all four to Ninja. It would kinda suck, wouldn’t it? Having Ninja be the ‘sutility’ melee is totally fine, but the other jobs shouldn’t have to suffer in what they can have because of that. It’s the exact same with Bard and Dancer. Why should one have to suffer for the other to benefit? There are plenty of ways they could have kept Bard the way it was without making Dancer redundant. Removing synergy stuff like Refresh I get, but it would’ve been nice if they at least added something else to use instead. If it was in role skills then they don’t have to worry about one job cancelling out the other.

Jobs can have overlap between their capabilities and still provide something unique. I mean, I always found it weird that nobody is dubious about the Machinist having almost no utility. I mean, the play guide describes the ranged DPS role as one that ‘inflicts sustained damage (isn’t the ranged DPS a burst oriented role functionally?) and supports companions’. That might be true for Dancer, and partially true for Bard (barely), but how come Machinist just gets left out lol? Surely they deserve some kind of utility, if ‘supporting companions’ really is supposed to the point of the role. I mean, Tactician is essentially just a role skill

Healers also have been suffering from gradually losing all their interesting abilities. Astrologian’s cards of course are the most extreme example. They’ve kinda went the opposite direction to ranged though. Instead of concentrating the majority of the role’s utility on one class, they just keep gutting utility abilities and not even giving us more DPS abilities or something to use instead.

I feel like Bard is the job that’s often referred to in regard to this because the thing that suffered (it’s identity) was such a core part of why people played the job.

Not saying it’s any better, but at least Astrologian still has its cards (even if they’re superficial at this point). To compare to Bard, it’s like if they removed all the card effects like now, then left us with what we have now for a bit (the damage only cards), then next expansion they rework every card to be a single target heal. On a 90 second cooldown. With no more buffs. Then, to add insult to injury, a new healer is added the same type of abilities that Astrologian used to have, on a shorter cooldown in most cases, with a decent variety of unique support options. Meanwhile, Astrologian gets nothing unique of its own, and is left with a card system that’s nowhere near what it started as.

It’s funny that, as the amount of jobs in FFXIV has increased, the amount of variety has decreased (outside of superficial differences)

[RadicalPesto]

It feels like this thread is just another iteration of "bard is ruined forever because crit buff and battle voice are gone", mixed in with a wish for the game to be redesigned to play like Ragnarok Online. Missing a few generic and passive buffs has very little to do with "homogenisation", given that Dancer, Machinist and Bard all have fairly distinct gameplay. DPS classes in this game are way more distinct between each other than Healer and Tank classes are, and this has been the case for a while.