Endwalker: job design&communication

[CKNovel]

Hai there,

Looking back at ShB content, it might be one of the best expansion. We had Ishgard restauration, an improve Eureka, bonus extremes, crafters rework and so on.
When it comes to battle content, we had:
12 standard savage + Delubrum savage.
8 extreme.
Bozja and the introduction of Duels and critical engagement.
1 Ultimate (2 were planned)

Some could argue there was a lot of work put into crafters rework, much more than necessary and that ShB should have had more battle content. I know we have some special people on this forum.

Yet, I'm surely not the only one that felt job design was lacking?
For nearly 2 years I've been complaining about MCH, my biggest grips with the job are the current Flamethrower, the boring Wildfire, the lack of buttons to push and so on about how boring the job became. But the rework is welcome, HW MCH is nostalgia and nothing can be more wrong than SB MCH.

However I look at other jobs, BLM and DRG are nearly perfect if not perfect. But how many jobs actually suffers from issues and had to get a rework?
SMN is the very first that comes on the top of my head, no need to repeat it, Egis are garbage.
DRK and WAR are incredibly similar, very few enjoys the Spam phases.
BRD is its worst expansion where it used to be the king as far as I know. From ARR to SB it has always been a strong job, if not the most popular.
Jobs simply didn't evolved at all or barely, see RDM as the most obvious case.
Other jobs needed a critical ability rework/buff, Ninja got a rework to reduce APM, Samurai got a better Shoha.
MNK got a rework that downgraded the job to its ARR version.

Ranged role lost all the support tools, their mitigation was first at 180s Cooldown, outperformed by mages who have access to res. I won't talk about the low DPS since it's about design and not balance.
And healers, I don't think I need to elaborate, it's the least appreciated role and all healers feels that it's now a chore to play the role.

ShB Job design simply wasn't up to the task, which is a shame, we got amazing stories, incredible soundtracks, we also had the best looking gear in my opinion.
Now we have 5 months waiting before the next news about the jobs, that's where communication is important but we never had communication when it came to job change. At most, we got that the devs don't know what to do with BRD and as far as I know, it's the only information we have.

When the job action will drop, it will be too late to submit feedback, they will have time to fix a few actions but past this point of no return, the job will remain in this state for 2 years unless one will get a MNK treatment, and we know the MNK feedback about that skeleton of a rework.

[Raikai]

In MNK's defense: it got downgraded to its basics to pave the way for a full rework in EW. Though I'd muse if it would be better to just do the rework all at once with EW, instead of a first half now... Maybe this was meant to test grounds or something like that?

[Jeeqbit]

When we see the job actions, a lot of what we see is a 4-month old version of it, so even giving feedback now is very late and probably wouldn't be considered until 7.0 now.

BRD is its worst expansion where it used to be the king as far as I know. From ARR to SB it has always been a strong job, if not the most popular.

This isn't true. In Heavensward, bards fell out of existence and you would not see them anywhere, because cast times were added to their attacks. In Stormblood these were removed and bards became one of the most popular DPS. Nothing really changed in Shadowbringers, so they probably just got overshadowed by MCH and DNC.

DRK and WAR are incredibly similar, very few enjoys the Spam phases.

Your argument is that they are similar because they both have spam phase, but what about the rest?

DRK is an off-global tank where most of what you are doing is weaving attacks, while WAR has more focus on a GCD rotation. DRK has a focus on mitigating damage while WAR has more of a focus on taking it and healing it.

[shao32]

Your argument is that they are similar because they both have spam phase, but what about the rest?

DRK is an off-global tank where most of what you are doing is weaving attacks, while WAR has more focus on a GCD rotation. DRK has a focus on mitigating damage while WAR has more of a focus on taking it and healing it.

DRK is 50s of simplified WAR gameplay and 10s of throw all your oGCD and MP under raid buffs, basically DRK is WAR with an small oGCD spam window right now, is not only about delirium.

[CKNovel]

In MNK's defense: it got downgraded to its basics to pave the way for a full rework in EW. Though I'd muse if it would be better to just do the rework all at once with EW, instead of a first half now... Maybe this was meant to test grounds or something like that?

I think the same, obviously they could not add actions mid-expansion when EW was months away (11 months, thought), the problem with MNK is that it had bad basics and a terrible mechanic, Greasing Lightning.
I definitely hope it is a new ground for MNK and the same for MCH.

This isn't true. In Heavensward, bards fell out of existence and you would not see them anywhere, because cast times were added to their attacks. In Stormblood these were removed and bards became one of the most popular DPS. Nothing really changed in Shadowbringers, so they probably just got overshadowed by MCH and DNC.

Your argument is that they are similar because they both have spam phase, but what about the rest?

BRD - Cast times were not loved, I understand that.
Despite that, it remained a popular job, I'm not going to dwelve into "ranged meta" as meta is targeting a smaller portion of raiders, but early HW wasn't good for MCH either for kept receiving buffs after buffs until it was decent, viable and according to SQEX, "broken". BRD remained in the upper half of popularity.
SB was just where BRD outshined every form of support which is why they became so popular, I don't have any experience how their gameplay was, ShB is where they ripped the support to give it to DNC, under a new form. If I remember well, BRD only had Battle voice as a raid buff.

WAR&DRK - I didn't wanted to go too much into their similarities because my initial post would be too long.
WAR is a sub-DRK. Both their gauges are "Fill to 50 then empty", that's a carbon copy of the gauge use. Exceptions being Infuriate and Upheaval. (And Onslaught cost)
WAR doesn't have MP to manage, instead it's only a second combo to keep a damage buff up, that will probably be reworked/removed.
All mitigations are the same across all tanks, they just have different forms.

[ItMe]

I just wanna see all jobs have 32 or less actions/role actions so I don't have to do anything strange to get it all on my controller hotbars...

[Recon1o6]

Shb job design has been the worst by far. Most jobs got worse rather than better. The stated aims of the major downgrading of kits was to improve accessibility in a game that was already extremely accessible if people actually tried. A better solution would have been improving and making mandatory the hall of the novice

The main problem, is that our feedback is pretty much ignored here on the official forums, and theres only 2 devs working on jobs and both are dps players, nevermind the lack of difficulty. On the healer side of things, they are already gutting things for sage and have stated reasons for nerfs that go against the fundamentals of how the job functions.

Jobs that got worse:
Dark knight
Scholar
Astrologian
Monk
Bard
Ninja

Jobs where your mileage may vary:
Machinist
Ninja
Summoner
Warrior
White mage

Jobs that didn't really change:
Dragoon
Red mage
Samurai

Jobs that got better:
Black mage
Paladin

[wereotter]

Jobs that got worse:
Dark knight
Scholar
Astrologian
Monk
Bard
Ninja

Not sure if you're looking at the expansion as a whole or at launch... but I would say that monk at Shadowbringers launch was better than it was at the end of Stormblood. Being able to use fists of wind to have the increased movement speed while not losing any damage was nice, and there were some new skills that really helped out the job to make it feel a lot better to play. Four Point Fury was a big one that I think people have forgotten was added. It doesn't feel as good to play now, sure. But it did launch as an improvement over where it was.

Also... it was a massive adjustment, but I do actually enjoy ninja after its rework. I appreciate that ninjutsus got big potency increases when moved to the global cooldown and were made so that you weren't AS reliant on ping in order to wave them inbetween attacks. Though it does still have the problem where just like before where raiton was a DPS loss to use over fuma, now there's zero reason to use fuma once you hit level 35.