How fitting

[Lyth]

Ahh, salty water fishing.

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There's definitely a subset of the playerbase that really enjoys interesting ability interactions, myself included. I think that BLU (and possibly other limited jobs in the future) are a good choice for that sort of MtG style 'deck building' which favors elaborate interplay between skills. I don't think it's a good choice for standard job design, however.

A lot of people think that they want ability complexity. They don't.

MMOs seem to be very inefficient when it comes to ability design. You can create interesting PvP gameplay in a MOBA with just 4 or 5 abilities. You don't need 25-30. It's the content design that matters, and that's where the gameplay complexity needs to come out. You need to be able to intuitively pick up and play, and it needs to feel good to do so.

You certainly can build a 'lifesteal' tank as a central concept. What's the most memorable thing about Bozja on tank? Bloodsucker. Green numbers. That little vampiric noise that occurs every time you siphon HP. You absolutely could focus in on that experience. You still need a way to survive the attacks upfront, but that's why I suggested tacking on temporary HP as well.

Similarly, why do you think that people obsess about TBN? You could mitigate the same amount of damage with %DR, but you wouldn't get the same reaction from it. It's that feeling of activating the bubble, seeing 0 pop up, and following up with a counter attack. It's just like that green numbers effect. It works because it's viscerally satisfying, not because it's clever. Focus in on that.

Why is the most talked about GNB issue the sound effects? People just want to recapture that feeling of pressing the R1 trigger during Renzokuken. The best GNB action ever designed in this game was Heavensward DRK's Reprisal. The explosion delay was glorious.

If you sit down with a word document and try to type up a job design, you'll probably come up with something that sounds intellectually engaging but is incredibly dry to play. You can't math this stuff out. What matters is if the actions actually feel good to use. Every tank job has a few features that just resonate well with a lot of people. Rather than diluting these experiences across every tank, they should become the centerpiece for job design in their respective jobs.

[Shurrikhan]

There's definitely a subset of the playerbase that really enjoys interesting ability interactions, myself included. I think that BLU (and possibly other limited jobs in the future) are a good choice for that sort of MtG style 'deck building' which favors elaborate interplay between skills. I don't think it's a good choice for standard job design, however.

While I'd love to see that on BLU, agreed. The most customization I could see for most jobs would, idk, the difference between a Freya-esque DRG and a Kain-esque DRG, whereby the prior is (and more importantly, feels) more agile and lightly armored (greater frequency of leaps at less damage each, but likely almost identical potency within any given (raid) buff window).

You certainly can build a 'lifesteal' tank as a central concept. What's the most memorable thing about Bozja on tank? Bloodsucker. Green numbers.

This may come down to semantics, as to how much design is required before we can call something a "central concept", but it may also just be a difference in preference.

For me, I've had more than enough time with lifesteal's green numbers and shrill chimes, to the point I'd happily mute its sound effect if I'd an equally handy way of tracking when a lifesteal buff ends. I realize I'm probably in a minority there. But also, if it were just an instance of, as wanted by so many GNBs, of hearing that satisfying "click" (figurative and literal)... why wouldn't that be a better fit, for, say, a HoT-based healer or passively healing tank whose buffs can go off more often than just the server tick (such that you go from the 3-second tick, to a sort of heart-beat, to a three-step, to an accelerated heart-beat, and so forth).

If the sound experience is the primary thing drawing people in, other possibilities can outscale that, and therefore be a better fit for it. Yes, a lifesteal chime scales with enemies struck and attack speed and thus can make "I hit fast" or "I hit many" doubly satisfying (which I think, given your DRK concepts before, might be why the idea just so obviously "fits" for you), but it's just so... irrelevant to the mechanic itself that I'd just like to ensure it's not just being tossed out there arbitrarily. Heck, even if it's given to a DRK that gradually charges its sword with blood energy or whatnot to strike faster or cleave through more targets to really milk those chimes, what does that do that just a nice hissing thrum from your blade, a la HW Scourge, and on on-hit soulcutting/stealing SFX during a given buff like Blood Weapon (even one with no lifesteal), wouldn't? Unless DRK lives or dies by its ability to be healed for damage dealt, those attack-rate dynamics and the like are going to be the centerpiece, not the lifesteal. Unless really acted upon, that lifesteal just going to be a different form of eHP padding, similar to PLD's Block.

Why is the most talked about GNB issue the sound effects? People just want to recapture that feeling of pressing the R1 trigger during Renzokuken.

Right, but that doesn't mean that feeling wouldn't be equally (if not better) recaptured from, say, spending an Aetheric Charge bar in a channeled form of Continuation to time oGCDs to prearranged attacks (or, attacks arranged by GCD presses once every GCD or two, which would feel relatively infrequent by comparison), a la the actual Renzokuken experience. We already know we can client-side this, and while that does open it up to occasional hacker who could auto-optimize any such mechanic (not that they can't already), that could be really fun so long as it's not overly affected by ping.

You've got the satisfying sound, yes, but if it's still just amounting to hitting 1-2-3-1-2-3-1-2-3, it's not going to satisfy for long. Something more needs to follow from or in the style of those original attractors.

If you sit down with a word document and try to type up a job design, you'll probably come up with something that sounds intellectually engaging but is incredibly dry to play. You can't math this stuff out. What matters is if the actions actually feel good to use. Every tank job has a few features that just resonate well with a lot of people. Rather than diluting these experiences across every tank, they should become the centerpiece for job design in their respective jobs.

Oh, I'm aware. It's why I try to instead imagine what would really be really cool to do in each of a handful of lucrative sample fights, what I want the moment-to-moment thoughts to be like, and what would likely leave someone grinning even in its simplicity. I just disagree that a sound or a particular scaling pattern or a generic mechanic is sufficient centerpiece. Rather than trying to see what can resonate from an arbitrary combination of job and mechanic, I'd rather very sharply envision a particular good feeling and try to work backwards from that. What are some of the feelings that should be prevalent in playing DRK and likely to make someone want to main it? WAR? PLD? GNB?