The current job design system is not fit for purpose

[Melichoir]

It's funny, because homogenization inevitably results in more variety. Making jobs overly unique and disparate creates more imbalance. Eventually what we end up with is a few optimal class choices, and a bunch of other classes that never get used because they're "not allowed" in the meta and heavily frowned upon even in casual content.

Bit confused here cause making everything the same gives us..variety? Those are kinda mutually exclusive, unless the variety were talking about is whether someone is using a an Axe or sword and shield. But thats not variety at that point - thats just glamour.

Now yeah, the more diversified the classes were, teh more that meta's mattered. But a lot of this stemmed from them focusing to hard on class synergy and a few skills which were to strong (looking at you Trick Attack). Theyve done a decent job addressing some of this by tweaking how some skills functioned.

The other issue is class design. You see, the devs fixed the unique issue by essentially making classes function the same in both playstyle and numbers. This was a mistake. Meta, at the end of the day, boiled down to DPS output. What was the most optimal dps group. So to fix the numbers issue it shouldve focused on tweaking potencies.

But they went further than that and made classes play similar to one another as well. The formula for WAR, DRK, and PLD is pretty straight forward - build up gauge/meter as needed, then press a CD and spam a GCD 5 or so times. Holy Light, Blood Spiller, and Fell Cleave are all this mechanic. It does the job, but its just so damned boring and uninteresting. These classes lose their identity and interesting nature.

But if you look at our shiny new tank, the GNB, it doesnt play like that. There is no "Pop CD and Spam this 5 times in a row" mechanic. You manage dots, an alternate Combo, burst damage, a damage buff to fit all together nicely, along with a bit more complex CDs. It feels different, plays different, and is fun. Why in hells name cant we have this same kind of intricate design for War, PLD, and DRK. You want a tank that can do a burst phase? Fine. Make that War. Stop forcing the other tanks to have the same design philosophy.

Btw, they havent gotten rid of 'meta'. The meta is just broader now - two melee dps, two ranged dps, tanks nad healers shouldnt be the same class with the exception of WHM. Hell they havent gotten rid of synergy either. DRK and WHM synergize to much cause of LD and Bene.

[Morningstar1337]

Btw, they havent gotten rid of 'meta'. The meta is just broader now - two melee dps, two ranged dps, tanks nad healers shouldnt be the same class with the exception of WHM. Hell they havent gotten rid of synergy either. DRK and WHM synergize to much cause of LD and Bene.

I was expecting GNB and WHM to be mentioned, not DRK and WHM. Mostly because of Superbolide

[Melichoir]

I was expecting GNB and WHM to be mentioned, not DRK and WHM. Mostly because of Superbolide

Super bolide is a bit wierd, but it doesnt kill you at the end of its duration if you dont get healed for what would be your max hp. One or two big heals will easily be enough to pull you out of the danger zone.

[Goji1639]

Bit confused here cause making everything the same gives us..variety? Those are kinda mutually exclusive, unless the variety were talking about is whether someone is using a an Axe or sword and shield. But thats not variety at that point - thats just glamour.

Not making things the same, making them similar. That's what we have now; classes that are similar enough functionally that they can be adequately balanced. Start making classes too fundamentally different and we end up with a meta that only allows a handful of classes to even participate, so less variety overall.

What we have now is working, the meta is broad enough where everyone is viable. Not that SE shouldn't always be looking for ways to make gameplay more interesting, but the homogenization of classes exists for an important reason and isn't inherently a bad thing.

[Melichoir]

Not making things the same, making them similar. That's what we have now; classes that are similar enough functionally that they can be adequately balanced. Start making classes too fundamentally different and we end up with a meta that only allows a handful of classes to even participate, so less variety overall.

What we have now is working, the meta is broad enough where everyone is viable. Not that SE shouldn't always be looking for ways to make gameplay more interesting, but the homogenization of classes exists for an important reason and isn't inherently a bad thing.

I dont agree however, I think they missed the mark by overcorrecting. Yeah, in the case of tanks everythign is viable. Im not gonna dispute that. But also in the case of tanks, they sacrificed a lot of identity to achieve this goal - something they didnt have to do. GNB vs the other 3 tanks illustrates the problem. GNB does not play like hte other tanks outside of very rudimentary things (Like pressing 'x' to use a mitigation CD, or having an Invuln, or having a tank stance.) The class playstyle wise and skill wise is different so that it has it's own unique identity. But PLD (and more to the point WAR and DRK) do not have this uniqueness. Why exactly do we think it is an improvement to make DRK spam BS 5 times in a row, just like Warrior? Or have PLD do the same thing under Requiescat with Holy Light? Why is it that tanks need this kind of mechanic? The answer is rather than design the tanks to have their own unique identties and be viable, they took the easy way - Make all of them play similarly and just rename the skills. I dont see how it's possible to make the point that Delirium isnt just discount IR, and Requiescat forces the same play - spam a skill till the buff fades.

As an example - is there a real reason why we couldnt have the DRK skill tree from HW currently with some slight tweaking? Forget about tank stance change with damage mitigation and damage reduction. Would 3.0 DRK function in the current environment? Yeah, it would work just fine with minor modifications and tweaking potencies so its not an OP monster. And that was it's own kit and own feel. I am feeling you could get similar feelings out of War. PLD...well maybe leave PLD alone. Even with the mechanics issue mentioned above, it does have some redeeming qualities. Id maybe change how req works but thats just me.

But yeah, there wasnt a need to dumb down DRK the way it they did, and they couldve easily worked with War to give it some of it's pizazz back. But they over homogenized tanks. It's my biggest gripe with the devs.

[shao32]

There is a point where wanting to make certain Jobs archive the same results and how they do it is a different thing.
In the past tanks where unbalanced bcs certain tanks was able to bring certain unique feactures and by result extra chances in raid over the others like for example the raid mitigation skills, cover or the slashing debuff but in the end nothing of this was really mandatory and every tank was perfectly viable and I can say that from my own experience that I raid and clear every savage tier on SB with DRK without interruptions, but in the end wanting all tanks bring the same in some degree shouldn't be translate in how they operate to get that stuff and there is where the problem resides.

Gameplay diversity, we reach a point where tank have a severe problem of gameplay diversity and healers suffer from this in a degree too, the proliferation of spam the same skill 5 times in a row it's a clear example of this but DRK and WAR have exactly the same gauge system, rage and blackblood are just clones right now, bloodspiller/fellcleave, quietus/decimate and delirium/inner release, the gauge it's just a re-skin with the same usage with extremely minimum differences and all this changes on DRK cost him his gameplay identity of resource managent job due the derivated MP economy changes and that's kills the unique own gameplay flow, no job should have big part of identity being copy pasted from other job and if the necessity of add a burst for DRK was so great they shouldn't have to do it at the expense of what make DRK a DRK, they should have been more creative and respect the job gameplay with something more unique, now it's a WAR clone with minimum gameplay differences, I can't but look at them like Rex and Cody from clone wars, different armour some different experiences but same face, same training, same origin.

Tanks gameplay need to be way more diverse and same for healers, dps rotations are not hard to balance and the perception of burst over sustained DPS have change a lot due the fflogs update on his metter so DRK needs to recover his gameplay, WAR needs to recover his own path and yeah all tanks need to have balance and bring the same or if not have strong points to compensate but balance shouldn't never ever come at the cost of fun and gameplay diversity, we don't want clones with different skins, we want our beloved jobs follow his own path in harmony with the rest, that's where they failed.

[Selova]

But when classes of 2.0 put full jobs to shame in terms of how fun they could be just by analysing what options were available should send clear signs something is very wrong.

I actually agree with a lot of your points, except for this one. There is not one single job. Not. One. That was more engaging or interesting to play in 2.0 than it is in it's current iteration. Every single job, especially BLM and DRG would put people to sleep if they still functioned like they did in 2.0. Outside of that gripe I do agree with certain jobs feeling too similar, especially the Tanks.

[SamRF]

I actually agree with a lot of your points, except for this one. There is not one single job. Not. One. That was more engaging or interesting to play in 2.0 than it is in it's current iteration. Every single job, especially BLM and DRG would put people to sleep if they still functioned like they did in 2.0. Outside of that gripe I do agree with certain jobs feeling too similar, especially the Tanks.

I did find healing more engaging back then. Other than that I'd agree.

[Melichoir]

I actually agree with a lot of your points, except for this one. There is not one single job. Not. One. That was more engaging or interesting to play in 2.0 than it is in it's current iteration. Every single job, especially BLM and DRG would put people to sleep if they still functioned like they did in 2.0. Outside of that gripe I do agree with certain jobs feeling too similar, especially the Tanks.

Maybe not 2.0, but 3.0 DRK is superior to the current one in terms of playstyle. And I know some people dont quite agree, but I even feel DA SpammoDRK of 4.0 is better than teh current one. They had nuances within how skills were used and managing resources. dont got that now.

The key difference, I believe, between 2.0 and now for DPS and the two related healers was that in 2.0 content the classes were designed and built around an identity. It may not have been perfect, but when you played a class, you felt like it was that class. The issue with homogenization is that it usually ends up killing that identity to make sure the numbers are identical. And that's the problem - Numbers are literally a math issue to solve. Identity is an art design issue. They conflated the two and used art design to solve a numbers issue.

Case and Point - Scholar: There is no difference between Eos and Selene now. They made it nothing more than a fancy glamour because rather than tweaking numbers or what not, they just said "Gut it and make them both identical".

[Shurrikhan]

It's funny, because homogenization inevitably results in more variety.

This would be true if XIV's take on homogenization allowed for greater difference in how those jobs reach their equal capacities. But it hasn't.

I'm as glad as anyone else to see damage types gone, and still want Embolden and Brotherhood diversified, but there's no reason DRK and WAR, for instance, must play so similar(ly dull) a fashion.