The current job design system is not fit for purpose

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Nobody wants a job with 50 buttons to map. Frankly I think the 30+ I have on most jobs is excessive. I'd be much happier having around 20 abilities.

Also, the homogenization was necessary. It wasn't excessive. The "meta" being drg bard NIN, something" needed to stop.

Also, people always have disagreements over how the jobs work.

Remember bow mage? Lots hated it, but I knew people who enjoyed it.

I have also heard that monk is not disliked for lacking utility. They don't like how the 4.x rotation was changed.

The ast changes are fine, people just whine about "muh interesting card mechanics" because it was changed. Getting 15 boles wasn't fun. It was annoying.


Your point on "raid buffs and dots being removed, so you can't tell the difference without a parser" also makes no sense, as you wouldn't be able to tell anyway. Most people don't even know they are bad, how would having broken buffs change that?

Bards 2% flat damage buff is a lot. 2% doesn't "feel" like much, but it's party wide and they done have to do anything over than keep their songs rotating. 2% for people who know what they are doing is a lot.

Dps in encounters is hitting upwards of 150k in openers. A 10% buff would just be stupid there.

[Shurrikhan]

Nobody wants a job with 50 buttons to map. Frankly I think the 30+ I have on most jobs is excessive. I'd be much happier having around 20 abilities.

20 job actions =/= 20 buttons. Heck, if it went the Dragoon route, 20 job actions would barely constitute the need for 10 buttons.

Also, the homogenization was necessary. It wasn't excessive. The "meta" being drg bard NIN, something" needed to stop.

That meta had nothing to do with job diversity and everything to do with parity. It could as easily be that today, if Bard were the best among its role instead of the worst among its role, and Ninja had even the output ceiling when including perfect teamplay that Samurai achieves on its own.

Also, people always have disagreements over how the jobs work. Remember bow mage? Lots hated it, but I knew people who enjoyed it.

The actual components rarely see tremendous difference in opinion, however. For instance, I preferred Bow Mage to Stormblood Bard, but I hated much of the same things about Bow Mage that most everyone else does; I simply weighed its consequent decision-making and games of chicken with AoEs a bit higher and was more annoyed by the inflexibility of SB Songs than were most. Now, I prefer Shadowbringers Bard over either but still have many of the same complaints I had about Stormblood's version and lament the lack of point-support.

The ast changes are fine, people just whine about "muh interesting card mechanics" because it was changed. Getting 15 boles wasn't fun. It was annoying.

This issue, too, has little to do with diversity and everything to do with tuning and the way the Royal Road mechanic worked. Because Royal Road was preemptive and its use one set obligatory (rather than retroactive and optional), it was always a gamble. Moreover, Expanded always overpowered Extended and especially Enhanced by up to some 80% effect.

Had Royal Road been balanced and made a keystroke to hit after card usage (affecting the remainder of the card duration), wasted cards would be far fewer and within the ability of Redraw to deal with. Any card with a wasted effect in itself could still be put to significant use on, simply, another card. It'd arguably be less annoying than the Seal system we have now.

Bards 2% flat damage buff is a lot. 2% doesn't "feel" like much, but it's party wide and they done have to do anything over than keep their songs rotating. 2% for people who know what they are doing is a lot.

That's the thing, though. Buffs are moving further and further into territory that is perceptible only with parsers. You can still notice a 10% buff. But 2%?

And the problem isn't just the percentiles on the raid buffs --- it's how narrowed into burst windows jobs have become by stacking more and more of their ppm into CDs, how standardly aligned those CDs have become (which helps for compositional flexibility, just as would gauge mechanics, but expands the power of indirect percentile contribution), and, less significantly, buff multiplicity.

[ForteNightshade]

There's a lot to unpack here. So lets start with:

Nobody wants a job with 50 buttons to map. Frankly I think the 30+ I have on most jobs is excessive. I'd be much happier having around 20 abilities.

To each their own, I suppose. But 20 abilities gets you current Machinist and Bard who barely fill two hotbars worth of abilities. While it worked out okay for Machinist, Bard has become incredibly dull imo.

Also, the homogenization was necessary. It wasn't excessive. The "meta" being drg bard NIN, something" needed to stop.

No, it was not. That meta existed purely due to Piercing being provided by a single job and how FFlogs factored in parses; pDPS was absolute king and nothing compared to Trick Attack. Some homogenization is needed, yes. But Bard was absolutely gutted, Monk still has practically no identity and the tanks and healers are near palette swaps of each other. Put another way, making Vengeance and friends all two minutes is an example of good homogenization. Making Delirium an edgier looking Inner Release was lazy.

Remember bow mage? Lots hated it, but I knew people who enjoyed it.

I have also heard that monk is not disliked for lacking utility. They don't like how the 4.x rotation was changed.

They weren't the majority. Hence why Bard was revamped in Stormblood; to near unanimous praise. The devs then, baffling, stripped away nearly all its utility.

You really ought to look at the DPS forums to see the myriad of problems Monk has. It goes far beyond the 4.0 rotation. Cliff notes version? The job has a ton of situational to downright worthless abilities, hasn't changed or evolved since ARR and complaints have been largely ignored.

The ast changes are fine, people just whine about "muh interesting card mechanics" because it was changed. Getting 15 boles wasn't fun. It was annoying.

Considering Astro is still played less than White Mage or Scholar by a sizable margin at the Savage level despite being objective stronger, begs to differ. As does nearly every thread, poll or census, be it from casual to hardcore players, all complaining over the card system. You could literally take away all six cards, keep just Lord/Lady and virtually nothing changes. That isn't a good design. Astro is very reminiscent of Bow Mage. Some liked it; most hated it.

And you know what else isn't fun? Getting the same three seals in a Sleeve Draw window that will clip your GCD almost every time. That's far more annoying, and forces Lightspeed into babysitter role.

Bards 2% flat damage buff is a lot. 2% doesn't "feel" like much, but it's party wide and they done have to do anything over than keep their songs rotating. 2% for people who know what they are doing is a lot.

It isn't when accompanied by a 50 potency nerf to Bard's DoTs. Fun fact, that supposed "buff" actually wound up being a overall nerf which is why Bard now sits as the weakest job in the entire game except in fights with multiple targets. That 2% was worthless.