My biggest problems with the DPS battle system and how to fix them

[Lambdafish]

Since ARR we have seen many shifts in the battle system, and I believe that this has culminated in the messiest it has ever been. The biggest problem I see is that there is no real identifier of what a certain DPS should be, causing mass disparities between jobs within a role, and a mass balancing nightmare that leads to jobs being either OP or terrible. The only defining things about roles is:

- Melee: Attacks at melee range
- Caster: Attacks at range, has cast times
- Ranged Physical: Attacks at range, does not have cast times

To me, these are too vague of classifications with the number of jobs that we have now. What it results in is jobs like RDM and BLM being in the same category, competing for a slot, when the jobs are wildly different. We could equally pair jobs up as follows and it would make as much sense:

- Selfish: BLM, SAM, MCH
- Hybrid: DRG, MNK, SMN
- Support: DNC, BRD, NIN (possibly hybrid now, but was definitely support in SB), RDM

The problem right now is that jobs are balanced against their role with things like movement tax and raise tax when these things don't have a definable mathematical value to the party. It would be better to balance DNC and BRD against NIN and RDM for the support value that they bring to the party, but to do that we would still need to account for differences in movement, and the defined role slots that are in the game.

The way I would fix this is to better establish the identity of the roles into the selfish to support structure (with some outliers based on inherent identity), by giving jobs more or less damage and utility in 6.0, so that it looks more akin to something like this:

- Selfish: BLM, MNK, SAM, NIN
- Hybrid: SMN, RDM, DRG (+ GEO)
- Support: DNC, BRD, MCH

This puts the roles far more inline that Melee are selfish, casters are hybrid, and ranged physical are support, allowing the jobs to be far more balanced against each other and allowing for better rules to balance jobs against.

To go back to my definition of the rules, this would now become:

- Melee: Attacks at melee range, very little utility
- Caster: Attacks at range, has cast times, has some utility, including a raise
- Ranged Physical: Attacks at range, does not have cast times, lower DPS, high utility

With the only two outliers being DRG and BLM who are swapped.

From there, the roles would do fairly similar rDPS, with a concept taken from the way current physical ranged DPS is supposed to work (all should do similar damage, with DNC getting it from party buffs and MCH getting it from selfish DPS), but ranged physical would get it from buffing the party and melee would get it from pure damage output.

What does the community think? Regardless of whether or not this is the correct way, I feel like something needs to be done about role identity because right now what the role is being balanced around feels meaningless and jobs like MCH and SAM seem to be suffering for no reason.

[Shurrikhan]

I... honestly don't much care who ends up having indirect contribution, or how much so. I just despise raid buffs that aren't significant enough to influence gameplay or even make anything appear stronger in the moment, only the final number tallies.

It makes more sense to me that whoever plays around a position most able to split its attention onto other members and move to and around them as would be helpful should be the one with the most strength allocated to indirect means. Beyond that... whatever.

I certainly don't feel like such typal distinctions are necessary for job identity. On average, I find it at least as likely that they'd conflict with individual job identities.

[Lambdafish]

I find it at least as likely that they'd conflict with individual job identities.

I think this is the biggest problem with the DPS role system. It was made at a time where there weren't many jobs and job identities weren't so wildly varying. Even Physical/Caster ranged weren't so separate, with 2 slots being dedicated to melee, and 2 being dedicated to ranged. IMO the system we have is archaic and not designed for the amount of, and varying styles of job that we have in the game now.

[Shurrikhan]

I think this is the biggest problem with the DPS role system. It was made at a time where there weren't many jobs and job identities weren't so wildly varying. Even Physical/Caster ranged weren't so separate, with 2 slots being dedicated to melee, and 2 being dedicated to ranged. IMO the system we have is archaic and not designed for the amount of, and varying styles of job that we have in the game now.

I obviously can't disagree with that; I just feel that trying to pigeonhole jobs even further into homogeneous roles and sub-roles is the opposite direction of where we should be going. I.e. let Bard be more Bard; where exactly its indirect contribution ends up from there, within reason, is basically irrelevant.

[Jybril]

Well wasn't MCH was kinda a support and it was a crap version of BRD on release? Plus the other issue it had with it lol.

I like how MCH is and it's how it should have been since the beginning. (Edgar from FF6 said hi for years lol.)

How would you make MCH a support a second time though?

[Sebazy]

I've said it in other threads and I'll say it here too.

SE's job system is such a huge advantage over FFXIV's rivals and yet they simply don't truly take advantage of it in this game.

The job design team is simply too small (Not to mention that I honestly don't think the QA helps much here either) and arguably doesn't entirely grasp how things pan out at the very top end of play to ever truly balance all these DPS jobs perfectly. New changes go live, we all pull out the spreadsheets out and the jobs that don't quite meet the grades get relegated to garbage status even if the disparity isn't wide enough to actually warrant that brand.

With gear being as flexible as it is, why aren't SE embracing this and making certain jobs excel at certain fights? This isn't WoW. Juggling a couple of similar jobs within a role isn't a great hardship at all. With FFXI I'd typically turn up to a raid to start clearing as SCH, switching to BRD, WHM or BLM as the evening progressed and more people joined. I'd love to see this encouraged within FFXIV.

[Shurrikhan]

How would you make MCH a support a second time though?

Idk, Tracer Fire from Rook turret? Aetherplasm from Bishop overload? Anything that uses active support options rather than just passive capacity and CDs would be nice.

[ForteNightshade]

With gear being as flexible as it is, why aren't SE embracing this and making certain jobs excel at certain fights? This isn't WoW. Juggling a couple of similar jobs within a role isn't a great hardship at all. With FFXI I'd typically turn up to a raid to start clearing as SCH, switching to BRD, WHM or BLM as the evening progressed and more people joined. I'd love to see this encouraged within FFXIV.

I suspect it has to do with fear people wouldn't like such a system, though the lack of job design staff certainly remains a factor. It's entirely hearsay on my part but whenever I've seen this brought up on reddit, here or even in various discords I'm apart of. A lot of people dislike the idea of being encouraged to play jobs outside their preferred favourites.