The current job design system is not fit for purpose

[Hazama999]

This kinda hurt to read, and it's cause it made me miss 3.0's Dark Knight.

[Imakun]

I will never forgive them for murdering AST like that. It was the perfect example of changing something just for sake of changing. It was fun, engaging and rewarding.

Fishing for the right seals to use on a 2 minute ridiculous ability while mindlessly spamming random cards is nowhere near as good as they think it is, making me feel like an automated bot.

WHM got a system that is both useful and rewarding with Misery and complements its role very well now, but AST and SCH had to die for it and that's hardly fair.




Waiting 2 years for major changes to jobs sucks but it is what it is, I just hope they drop the idea of "everything needs to look new at expansion launch" because that just doesn't work in the long run.

[Kytrin]

Waiting 2 years for major changes to jobs sucks but it is what it is, I just hope they drop the idea of "everything needs to look new at expansion launch" because that just doesn't work in the long run.

THIS. Oh my god this x1000! Samurai was largely fine at the end of Stormblood. We did not need half the changes they made, especially to Hagakure, when Shadowbringers dropped. I admit I like some of the abilities they added, but they really have a nasty habit of going overboard with the start of the expansions and then spend the entire expansion trying to fix it. It's aggravating. If the job is performing well, just leave it be and give it a few new abilities or something. We don't need you to rewrite it.

[ForteNightshade]

It wasn't, though. SAM was the worst Melee DPS by a large margin. Even at the end it forever fell under the shadow of SMN, BLM, NIN, and MNK for a slot. It was only ever seriously used on O12S's door boss. It definitely needed changes and I firmly believe current SAM is better then Stormblood SAM.

To be fair, FFlogs can be faulted for that to a certain extent. Prior to Shadowbringers, logs only credited personal DPS as its sole ranking factor. This meant all selfish jobs weren't considered valuable since they actively hurt the logs of everyone else. Had that system stayed in place, Black Mage and Samurai would once again be suffering.

Now with that all said, Samurai certainly needed some buffs damage wise but rotationally, it was fine. The whole change to Hagekure made very little sense, especially given the new system is far less intuitive and rather clunky. Of course, that's only my opinion.

[Shurrikhan]

It wasn't, though. SAM was the worst Melee DPS by a large margin. Even at the end it forever fell under the shadow of SMN, BLM, NIN, and MNK for a slot. It was only ever seriously used on O12S's door boss. It definitely needed changes and I firmly believe current SAM is better then Stormblood SAM.

No, by the end of the expansion it performed within less than a percent of those jobs, so long as it was played in its optimal comp, which was just as much a concern for SMN, MNK, DRG, BRD, MCH, and arguably BLM.

I can agree with you that, now that Hagakure is no longer a trap and Tsubame-Gaeshi has been smoothed out, current SAM is better than Stormblood's, but rDPS balance in top-tier play at at the end of Stormblood was some of the tightest, likely, in MMO history. Its only issue was that they each fit only into certain comps for optimal play.

[Kleeya]

RDM's aoe bind was not useless. It did save my life numerous times in Eureka, and even in dungeons when the tank died, letting me get back the aggro of all the mobs. Now enjoy your even less crowd control based game after complaining so much to remove it.

That being said you forgot to say that the homogenisation you complain of has been asked by a big part of the players themselves, and still continue to this day. Some examples ? For my old and actual main job, people wanting to nerf RDM's verraise so that he become more like the other mages. Or nerf DRK's TBN so that this skill becomes another rampart, and so that the job lose his biggest gameplay difference with the other tanks.

And i am not even talking of how most people are obsessed with big dps numbers only, which lead to things like AST cards becoming all dps buffs because who cares of mitigation or mp regen cards, or aggro becoming a trivial thing to keep because nobody wanted to use these aggro stances and combo anymore. When i actually see how some healers begin to not care at all of healing or rezzing others because they want to dps so much, similar to when at the end of Stormblood more and more tanks weren't caring about keeping aggro anymore, it wouldn't surprise me if 6.0 healers changes were that :

- all healers healing/buff/rez gcd and ogcd skills have been removed ;
- all healers have been given a true dps rotation on par with dps jobs ;
- all healers have been given a lvl 1 passive skill : "you now heal, buff and rez yourself and other players for a part of the damages you inflict on the ennemies".

We hope that you will love these changes which solve the problem of 1 button dps cycle being boring, and allow you to concentrate on your dps without other players becoming worried for their survival anymore !

In short, isn't SE just giving us what most players want ? XD

[Floortank]

I'm enjoying all the jobs and I understand why they overlap in places.

[Melichoir]

Snip.

I typically agree with a great deal but I dont know what the solution would. It's pretty easy to say Homogenization is pure cancer and is bad for the game, but there is the flip side where you had synergy and meta issues that would preclude certain classes from being effective in expert and savage content. Yes, in some ways the classes should definitely be more in line with one another so youre not relying on a specific class in your group to be functional.

The only thing I can think of is they need to have classes focus on themes and just have the numbers match up. As an example, the devs are relying too heavily on the "Spam and Burst" mechanic for 3 of the tanks. This would be Delirium, IR, and Requiescat - skills that promote spamming 1 damage ability 5 or 6 times until the buff timer. This shouldnt be a thing. GNB as a class proves you do not need to have a tank have this mechanic to be functional. Instead, the tanks should all be designed to operate in their own way and have their own look and feel. For me (and I know that I am a minority when it comes to this opinion) DRK in SB is vastly superior playstyle to the current iteration of DRK. DA spam gives people carpal tunnel, but the managing of it was much more interesting and rewarding than the current DRK iteration. And to be frank, HW DRK was funner to play than SB DRK.

Point is they need to redesign these classes to feel more thematically consistent and design them playstyle first and just plug and tweak numbers until they all get roughly the same consistent DPS output. I know thats an oversimplification, but Im just annoyed how these classes are just to similar thematically. Why is it that PLD, the only class with a SHIELD, does not utilize that aspect in its attacks and CDs? DRK is really the only class that seems to use Magic and is magic orientated (yes pld was HL and Clemency, but thats it compared to Unleash, Unmend, EoS/FoS, Dark Mind, AD, TBN, and etc. The class really has the whole magic vibe with it.) Warriors should literally be Hulk Smash. Give them big weapons with big smash damage. They kinda do it currently so I guess that works out.

If you can design GNB to feel like its own tank and not be a copy/paste of the other 3, why is it so hard to d that with the others.

[Stanelis]

OP post

Veteran's have been saying this for years but Se doesn't listen. The issue with homogeneisation is the party size is a fixed number (4 or 8), so different jobs cannot have too different abilities and effects relative to their role, because it would lead to some classes being used over others (that s what happened with paladin and warrior at the beginning of 2.X).