DPS jobs lacking utility?

[AnotherPerson]

-"Good" utility is anything that restores your resources i.e. HP, MP, TP, job gauge. Things like equilibrium, lucid dreaming, goad, infuriate, etc. that immediately benefit you and is almost always a DPS increase because of ease-of-use and flexibility.

That's the joke. We already have those tools. Some jobs have a couple more than others, but we have those tools at our disposal. In that regard, DPS is not "lacking" good utility. And yet people say we lack 'good' utility, which means good utility is not simply related to numbers.

In game design 'utility' can be really hard to codify, because it comes in two flavors: Tangible (Ex: Trick attack, dance partner, regens, leylines), and Intangible (Ex: En Avant).

If utility is something that is adding to a numerical value that your constantly comparing, it is easy to design but can often feel either invisible (Ex: Bard songs), helpful (regens when they won't ever be a difference maker in even getting the healer one more cast), or overwhelming (old trick attack or piercing/slashing debuffs for example). Its also hard to make even really strong ones feel good or to make them noticeable for your teammates. A few feel REALLY good (Leylines) because they both are a meaningful DPS increase AND are visible in how they are helping you (It isn't an accident many of the 'fun' utility is a speed increase, because casting more is very visible), but overall even when these are good they lack any real 'highpoint' compared to a big attack with a flashy animation.

Intangible utility is easier to make feel impactful to some degree, and as long as their use cases come up remotely often (ex: Aetherial Manipulation and Between the Lines are very frequently useful to maintain uptime), but they can be much harder to keep relevant (Ex: DPS Esunas, heavies, stuns) because they can break encounters, and its harder to overall design them because by their nature they are introducing entirely new mechanics to the fight. Most of the ones that 'work' in XIV are movement, and tank damage reduction effects, though "rez-mage" gets a special mention. XIV used to have more of these, but most were considered bad (ex: Ewer cards) or frustrating to use (manashift) and the game pushed away from these.

Exactly. This here is the real kicker. Everyone here has been complaining about lack of useful/good utility when in reality we have plenty of utility that affects numerical values. Support healing buffs? Mantra, Nature's Minne. AoE Mitigations? Shield Samba / Tactician / Troubadour / Feint / Addle. Resource sustain? Second Wind, Bloodbath, Lucid Dreaming. Damage increases? Pretty much in every toolkit, Chain Strategem, the current AST cards, Divination, Dragon Sight, Technical Finish, Dance Partner, Trick Attack, etc. The list goes on and on. These support skills are certainly useful utility.

What people have been feeling when they say lack of utility is the intangible benefits that the utility gives in relation to how it can change your avenue of approach without affecting encounter design. The most obvious example is always Black mage - properly using Aetherial Manipulation and Between the Lines is the fastest ways to increase your DPS and stay safe from avoidable AOEs - all the while not giving an actual DPS increase on its own. How? By forcing the player to move and reposition, in other words - Utility for Encounter design. Situational Utility for Situational Value.

In other words, the lack of utility stems from the unchanging feel of encounter design. This comes from the obvious problem of a DPS-centric meta. Everyone looks at utility at whether we would lose potential DPS tradeoff. We have plenty of situational utility - Heavy + bind + sleep. However, we don't ever use them because there's rarely a need to necessitate their usage as requiring them would start locking specific role/job compositions, and that's not always applicable when you go into Duty Finder with a bunch of random players whose jobs might just all be red mage. In other words, the readily available situational utility is usually focused internally on the job itself. The main difference between good vs. bad situational utility is how applicable is their usefulness on a general consensus in the variability of their intended purpose. That is what makes utility feels 'unique' and dependent on the player using it itself giving a notable impact on the fight.

In this case, mobility is always useful because we use it to dodge AoEs or gap close and resume our DPS rotation. That's mainly because encounter design has a lot of avoidable mechanics that require players to move. Black mages benefit more to mobility since their situational utility's effect can drastically change per party whereas other jobs gap close for the purpose of re-engaging/disengaging and a lot less so for dodging AoEs. Their mobility serves a very static goal, but it's still better than having no gap closer at all (PLD before intervene).

Situational utility with variability is mainly what AST's old cards did because you can never guarantee what you drew, instead you used what you got to its best effect. People loved this side of AST cards. At the same time however, the card you drew was very situational on whether it could be useful, so it suffered when fights became heavily scripted. It was also what led to people 'fishing for balance' since damage increase is always useful and Spire isn't. In other words, AST's original situational utility could be very off its intended purpose.

I have a feeling that situational utility is what led to Monk's Shadowbringers later toolkit, except the difference in the general utility is that the usage of those skills are very static - disengages and transitions don't add a lot of change, it just keeps things flowing. There's not much variance to make it feel different so their situational utility was very much so inapplicable to most of the fight.