What do you feel is your job identity in flavour and gameplay?

[Recon1o6]

Having being around since the start of 2.0 I have seen lots of changes both good and bad throughout the years to all the different jobs a player can play. I've played all of them at some time or another on my main or an alt and mainly just grumbled and changed to a different more fun job when one of them got gutted.

Sadly at this point as many threads have shown, the direction SE has taken over the years has been homogenizing, "balancing" or stripping critical and/or fun elements from each job to the point where we have had a tank shortage in 2.0 and 4.0, a melee shortage in 3.0 and a healer shortage in 5.0

Shadowbringers in particular has brought out a lot of disappointment with regards to job gameplay due to the sheer frustration and short sighted skill removal over the years boiling over. To address this, SE needs to go back to why heavensward's and some of the 4.0 jobs gameplay (such as brd and ast) was loved.

Every job had an identity, lore that matched, unique mechanics and abilities for the most part with only barest essentials cross class such as protect, swiftcast, foresight etc were needed. Buffs and debuffs for the most part were strong enough to feel like they had an impact. Individual but identical abilities (eg raise, ascend, resurrection) all looked different and related to their job


To this end, I would ask folks what they feel their job was at its highest point no matter when in the game's lifecycle in terms of feel (ie visuals, playstyle) and in terms of gameplay (abilities, potencies etc)



If we're lucky, perhaps we one of the community team picks this up when it comes to 6.0 and we see improvements

[MrKusakabe]

So far, I am absolutely satisfied with Red Mage. After all those years since this profession exists, in XIV, it's finally fully fleshed out. After 31 years!


Unlike before, where it was just a lazy and half-baked hackjob ("let's recycle WHM and BLM into one single character") with permanent back-and-forths in design (In some part, they had Dualcast, in some not), in visuals (the typical red-clad person with the plumed tricorne or .. whatever XI's supposed to look like) and sometimes totally vanishing even (how many FF parts skipped RDM?).

No, what I love about Red Mage in XIV in the current state: It's like a Rubic's Cube. No matter how I turn it, it all makes sense. There are weaknesses that have a proper compensation. Or strengths that have compensation weaknesses? See, it's perfect.

Which is weird, as these Jack of All Trade professions often tend to be very gimmicky where you are neither A nor B and the C part is just ridiculous so you rather play the "rea"l A or B profession. The whole mentoring by X'Rhun was fantastic and I love him as character. I am happy and glad Square Enix actually manages to keep the balance of the RDMs Pros and Cons. I could throw around numbers in DPS and Healing, about Rapier and Magic combat, about how it all makes sense. I could go on and on about this beatiful profession I ditched my GW2 characters over with no regret. But I did and will do in other threads.

Right now, I hope they do not touch RDM at all. No buffs, no removals, no nerfs.

I fell two times into an "identity crisis" as Scholar though. Right now, I still have an open thread in the healer section because I could not believe if it's me or the profession that suddenly changed. I got over that finally and enjoy to be your bespectacled Lalafell healer. However, the reason which led to my "Scholar midlife crisis" are there. I could fix the issues on my side, but still, Scholar is, unlike RDM, unfinished.

The stiff and unflexible Fairy bar is stupid and not worthy for such a huge company (and such a pricey game of this franchise). Square Enix does not even know what to do with it: Our Fairies are clunky, some skills imply connection/combos but are a dead-end and stuff like the Seraph sound nice but are so short and I don't know what's so special about it. Some skills outright feel me punished. For example, why would I want to send away my Fairy? It's not a "skill" which implies a "ace up our sleeves", but rather it's a trade. I trade in my fairy for aetherflow stacks. I know it's a bonus because of the added 20% potency, but still, if I lose my companion over that time, what is that?



You can see that cluelessness with the worst jobquest line ever. "Tomberry staring into a lake" for 15 quests straight. It's like a high school student wrote those as homework.

No need to talk about the DPS spells. "Art of War"? You mean the purple "Marylin Monroe Air Gust" (TM). A trashy DoT that lasts too short IMO - very annoying to babysit. Ugh.

In general though, I think Scholar is very cool. The whole idea of being a tactician and everything over the typical celestial shine White Magic is awesome. And some of the problems are a me-issue and my mediocre skill with this profession, but by just looking at the skills you can see that they are not interconnected well, which is a shame for a tactician.

[Edax]

When I'm dealing with the Shadowbringer story, I'm a Gunbreaker. For everything else, I revert back to a Ronin Samurai. Wielding a Gunblade or being a Samurai isn't something I can easily get in any other MMORPG.

[Gemina]

There really has been no high point. Each expansion is a perpetual shift of pros vs cons. Along with this, some jobs become more enjoyable to play, while others become less so. Others stay right where they are at.

What I can say is that all evidence will point to which job I have enjoyed playing the most, regardless of changes with each expansion going back to ARR. If I had some kind of graph or chart to exhibit, it would show SCH by a very large margin over all other jobs with SAM coming in second - though SAM was obviously a 4.0 pickup. When the max level content comes out, SCH is the job I absolutely love taking into them, and this has not changed across all the expansions. Just now I really enjoy taking SAM into them as well.

It's a bit ironic, considering all of the changes SCH has gone through. These changes for the most part have usually dealt with their DPS skillset. Since I don't care much for healer DPS, I have been for the most part unaffected by these changes throughout the years. As a healer, SCH has continuously become more and more powerful in this regard. Alliance raids are what I enjoy the most, and I easily make full use of my healing kit in there.

While I can't really say I am having more fun than ever, I am also most certainly not having any less of it. Content that is stale to me is stale because of repetition, but taking a new job into content that has become stale is a great way to liven it up again.

FFXIV to me is more of a lifestyle now, kind of like another social activity such as going to the gym, a board night, league of some sort, etc. What I mean by that is when places like those have rule changes, or someone starts going that is kind of a jerkface and you're not too fond of, among other cumbersome/annoying situations you just learn to live and deal with it.

I'm currently not that happy with the battle system in general, and I have a ton of problems with it. That doesn't really stop me from PvE content though. I just focus on what I enjoy rather than what I don't and that tend to keep me going.

[shao32]

HW DRK was the peak of the job and SHB is the bottom on terms of identity, complexity and sinergy with his internal mechanics for me it use to have more combos in a unique way, more MP economy, better mechanics, dot management and a priority system for his MP usage all of that gone, i just can't call it DRK anymore when is a WAR with more oGCD.

[MitsukiKimura]

AST had time extenders, different card effects, its lore ripped away. That was a big nail in the coffin for me because it was an amazing job back in stormblood. Those things need to return. If not the time extenders then the different card buffs, every card being damage has driven me away from the class. I'm not sure if they're trying to simplify it for the new players or to the raiders/parsers but it has to end. Everything doesn't have to be damage, people enjoy a engaging class than one that you can basically master within a few days.

[Avidria]

I liked StB bard a lot, and now that our songs give buffs again I feel like it's still in a good spot gameplay wise.

HW bard was the worst... the cast bar thing was absolutely awful. I started like, the week HW came out so idk what things were like at 50 for ARR to speak to that.

I think ShB has my favorite artifact set, though they have fairly consistently stuck to the theme of "fancy outfit big hat" for pretty much all of our sets. ShB's just seems the most... practical? For a job centered on raising spirits and rallying allies in combat. Other than maybe the shorts for females. StB's was good too imo but the big bag on the side kinda ruined it for me - was kinda distracting to look at and looked awkward while running.

The single half-pant AF legs from HW still confuses me sometimes lmao

[Shurrikhan]

HW or late-SB Monk (both at ludicrous SkS stacking) are probably the classes/specs/jobs/whatever that have clicked most with me of any MMO's, in any expansion. There are some close competitors, but still... HW had a godly base gameplay loop, and late-SB's macro-rotation was fun as heck. It all fit me aesthetically, too, but even if it hadn't the gameplay would still have been irresistible.

[Esmoire]

As a tank main I would like to see some more individual flavour to suit their iconography and just what you would expect from them.

If all the jobs were The Avengers, WAR is the The Hulk. For the most part I think they nailed it, though just coming from a fantasy standpoint, while all the tanks are close in DPS I think WAR should be the highest, and I think we should have a passive giving us more HP. This job should just feel the most like "Wow, she has no chill."

PLD is the shield-bearing job and should have even better mitigation than it has now. A return to 40% reduction on Sentinel would be a good start. There are some scaling issues that makes blocking SUCK when synced downward. Maybe a formula that has a higher minimum block value and then itemization is applied. PLD should be the best MT IMO though like GNB it has its reasons for often being the OT when possible. At the very least HG is really, really good even with its long CD.

I don't really like how all the gap closers except WAR are the same. There is a lot of potential to make them unique. I think this kind of charge system of something you want to use on interval makes sense for GNB because it has this feeling of being really high-input, really technical. Though I'd like to see PLD and DRK changed. Maybe PLD has no damage on it, but can use it on enemies and allies alike (the latter blocking an attack for them). DRK could have one that has no CD, but a minimum range of activation if 10 yalms or something. Thus you can't use it in a rotation, but it's always available to get in close. I am only iffy on the DRK one because the animation is so cool so I like getting to use it as it is, too.

DRK and GNB are pretty close to what I would want in terms of imagined fantasy. Maybe Shadow Wall should restore MP when taking damage kind of representing their very begrudging image. In any event I'd want them to see where they can change stuff to bring back some flavour into the role, then balance them after to be about close to damage as they are now.

[Kaiserdrache]

Paladin Identity:
- White Knight in Shining Armor saving the day when everyone else around fails n dies. Becomes stronger n faster when Allies fall
- Best Defense vs physical damage, most damage mitigation skills
- Weakest Tank in regard of active offense, extremely powerful on reactive offense via counterattacks through shield blocks and sword parries, shield block counters stun, sword parry counters are guarranteed critical direct hits that cause Weakness, reducing Enemy Damage temporarely.
- Effective Melee Interrupter
- Made to be the kind of last man standing, hard to defeat, good survivability to endure everything
- Hybrid Combat with physical skills and holy based magic spells/skills
- Tanking is based on Barriers, Shielding, Reflection, Invulnerability and Mitigation Effects based on your Defense or Block Rate Values.

Dark Knight Identity:
- Opposite of Paladin, uses two handed weapon for Cleave Attacks that are fast n powerful to erase trash mobs quickly, uses Dark Mark to enhance his Combat Skills.
- Best Defense as Tank vs Magical Damage, able to nullify and absorb Magic making Magic Usage close to a DRK useless.
- Most mobile Tank with alot of cleaving gap closers.
- Second most strongest Tank after Warrior in regard of Damage Dealng, best Offtank Option for Tank Switches, second most mitigation skills that are the most effectful n powerful after a Tank Switch and deal on losing Aggressivity to the MT high burst damage as synergy from Tank Switching.
- Effective Condition Dealer and Crowd Controler, Causes alot Blindness, Heaviness, Slow, Silence, Weakness and Vulnerability to debuff enemies, while stopping them from fighting effectively. Pushes enemies away if neccessary or pulls them together and binds them for easier AoE Nuking of trash.
- Tanking is based on Crowd Control, Debuffs, Conditions, Mobility and Mitigation based on Defense and Quickness Values
- Deals of all Tanks the most Damage over Time Effects that are in synergy n more powerful, so more debuffs n conditions the DRK causes.
- Uses Undeads as Meat Shields, created from defeated enemies that work as Barriers to them or Allies, when attached to them as Bone Cuirass, or instead uses them as Death Sacrifices, sending them out like Kamikaze Bombs to deal Aoe Damage that regens at the same time Ally MP by a portion of the dealt damage.

Just two examples of what Id like to see into Paladin and Dark Knight to diversify both more.