Minor Rant - General Combat / Damage

[Rhaggnos]

Hey there o/

I just finished the MSQ, got 4 jobs to 80 and a few others to 70ish and have been spamming dungeons / FATEs / raids for a while.

Overall I rly like the game - from world building to the varied game modes - and I do enjoy the Job designs.

However, although I really like the combat animations and even the pacing with weaving ogcd's etc, I gotta say half the skills in my bar feel like boring bloat.

Does anyone else get the feeling that some skills are just generic and uninspired? Is anyone excited to use Arm's Length?

Let me elaborate:

Dragoon:

Blood / Life of the Dragon is great. A buff to manage, full uptime, multiple functions and fun visuals.

Then you get:

Lance Charge - a measly 15% with 23% uptime... I'm not excited to use it, it just feels like a chore and one extra pointless button. Burst window yada yada... boring.

Dragon Sight - 10% / 5% buff with a range req. Again, why such a paltry number? If this was permanent once cast until broken i could get behind it, but still.

All the role actions also are sooo boring. I mean I get that they're meant to be lined up with mechanics so that fights are tight and they're needed to survive stuff, but goddamn they feel so pointless. You press a button with a large CD and nothing interesting happens XD

Frankly I'd find it more fun if most of this fluff was streamlined, for instance:

Life Surge is only ever used with the heavy hitters like Full Thrust, so why not simply roll a +X% crit chance into the skill itself instead of making it a separate CD? Or better yet, make is so Nostrund guarantees Stardiver will crit, or something more interesting.

Inner release is super fun, because it lasts long enough to be an exciting "phase" of sorts, but not these disposable minor buffs...

I mean, There's nothing inherently wrong with the skills themselves, but if I'm using a 90s+ CD I expect at least 100% increase in DMG / Healing etc. Something meaty.

Same goes for most filler attacks. All are standardized variations of "deals 280 ~ 330 potency", and the "hard hitters" hover around 400 to 700. With the exception of SAM's repeat Midare at 1600+ and maybe a couple BLM bursts, nothing feels meaningful. It's just a sequence of flashy lights that deal pretty abysmal dmg.

I'd expect something like Death Flare, which ends a phase, to be like 2000, not a pitiful 400. It's effectively on a 2m ~ 2.5m cd, and it barely hits harder than Ruin 4 which is spammable...

[Rhaggnos]

continued...

I'd more than welcome taking some dmg off the rest and getting rid of the fluff buffs to make key skills hit hard and feel powerful.



And then there's overall damage:

Even at lvl 80 with 510 gear hitting a lvl 70 mob it feels weak.

If you look at gameplay from other mmos loke WoW, the new Amazon one, Tera etc you'll see it's not uncommon for a single hit on a same level mob with mediocre gear to take 30 to 60% of it's hp off. Rarely will overworld trash mobs last longer than 3 casts / hits if you're even remotely well equipped. I'd expect a single Bloodspiller to bury a mob my level once I outgear a zone, but not even close.

In FF every single mob feels like it's a dungeon elite. They're also much more scarce and spread out, I feel. And most DoT's are just a minor extra source of dmg.
A Summoner needs both DoTs, a Drain/Fester and 2 to 3 Ruins to take down a trash mob, whereas in something like WoW you can insta-cast a single Corruption and walk away knowing it's dead in 6s or so.

Again, quest mobs, elites etc should be harder and more spongy, to be sure, but not the overworld raffle, imo. It feels like everything is a wet noodle fight. I love the game, but I miss 1 - 2 shotting small hordes of lesser mobs.



CC:

The complete lack of usable CC in PvE is pretty disheartening. In other games you can pretty much outskill mobs, keeping them CC chained and/or kite them to take zero dmg during regular encounters. There's a limit, but it usually allows interesting gameplay, like:

Rogue in WoW vs Elite Caster mob - Open with a stun -> Garrote to bleed + silence - 2x Mutilate to apply poisons - when silence ends, kick the cast to interrupt (locking out that type of magic for 10s) -> Envenom finisher for massive burst + poison proc -> Blind mob (it keeps bleeding out while you heal and recover stamina) -> pop Evasion to dodge for 15s -> DPS rotation once -> Second Stun (diminishing returns have fallen off since) -> 2x Mutilate -> Envenom finisher = Dead.

During all that time you use your CD's, CC, position (mobs cant dodge/parry/black from the back) and resource management to systematically outplay every action the mob has. If you do it right, you feel like a god, if not, there's a chance you'll die if you yourself get CC'd or just tank too much dmg.

[Rhaggnos]

continued...

In FF I feel like it's almost a turn-based thing. You trade dmg with a mob with your static DPS rotation and either you die or it does. Very little planing involved other than sidestep orange floor.


It's great when dealing with group content, not so good for the solo experience.

Also another minor gripe: why is it that in PvP they have your basic 123 combo be a macro with no delay, but don't allow you to macro it for PvE? It's not like you can do anything interesting with it by mix and matching the static order, so why bother?



None of this is an actual problem, just an opinion on the feel of combat overall.

All in all, for all it's facets I rly like the game, and have pre-ordered endwalker. Can't wait to level a Sage and Reraper. Just hope they do a bit more dmg :P


/rant


Thx for your time if you read, and I look forward to hear your opinons. Maybe I'm just super bad and am doing something wrong, who knows :P

Anyways, have a good one o/

[Jeeqbit]

Also another minor gripe: why is it that in PvP they have your basic 123 combo be a macro with no delay, but don't allow you to macro it for PvE? It's not like you can do anything interesting with it by mix and matching the static order, so why bother?

It's probably that way in PvP because it's less popular and the first time they try it, their hotbar is empty. It makes setting it up a lot faster. You could macro it but it would be complicated and it would go wrong sometimes.

[Rhaggnos]

It's probably that way in PvP because it's less popular and the first time they try it, their hotbar is empty. It makes setting it up a lot faster. You could macro it but it would be complicated and it would go wrong sometimes.

It's super simple to macro. The problem is that macros can only execute in 1s intervals for wait, and dont queue. When you cast a skill up to 0.4s before it's ready, it queues up to fire immediately, as I understand it. Macros don't, and the wait times cannot be 0.4, only 1s at a time. The result is it works, but it's considerably slower as you lose about 0.2s per cast compared to manual queueing.

I don't know if it's an engine limitation or if it's artificial to discourage macros, but so far outside crafting and QoL they're pretty useless. Not sure how ogcd's work tho.

[Mikey_R]

It's probably that way in PvP because it's less popular and the first time they try it, their hotbar is empty. It makes setting it up a lot faster. You could macro it but it would be complicated and it would go wrong sometimes.

It isn't to do with how popular it is, it's all to do with the style of comabt. PVE is very scripted and because of that, you can make rotations more complex, give them more buttons to think about etc. Whereas with PVP, since everything is dynamic, and things can change in a split second, you need easier to execute rotations so that you can concentrate more on the fight and your surroundings.

It's super simple to macro. The problem is that macros can only execute in 1s intervals for wait, and dont queue. When you cast a skill up to 0.4s before it's ready, it queues up to fire immediately, as I understand it. Macros don't, and the wait times cannot be 0.4, only 1s at a time. The result is it works, but it's considerably slower as you lose about 0.2s per cast compared to manual queueing.

I don't know if it's an engine limitation or if it's artificial to discourage macros, but so far outside crafting and QoL they're pretty useless. Not sure how ogcd's work tho.

The macro's were purposfully designed to not be effective in combat as the team did not want poeple to reduce the jobs to 1 or 2 macros that played the job for you.

Edit: As for the thread in general, the problem with having a high potency attack that vastly outdoes everything else is it causes Crit/DH RNG to matter more. If you do not get consistent crits/DH on the big hits, your damage is going to suffer compared to someone who does.

For overworld mobs, that was a design change from HW where poeple complained that the overworld from ARR was too easy and was not threatening enough, so they made the expansion mobs hit harder and have more HP.

[Seraphor]

Because this is a team game. You are playing in a party, and in all the content that "matters" (savage and ultimate) you're in a full party with 7 other people. Everyone has their buffs, their +5% damage skills, etc. and they all stack upon each other and snowball pretty quickly. If everyone could inflate their numbers by 10%, 20%, 30% etc. balance would be non-existent, bursting would be insane damage and fights would be over in seconds.
CC is very contextual and can be really unbalanced in higher level content. A stun is effectively damage mitigation, so a 3 second stun means no damage for 3 seconds, and damage in content that "matters" is very, very scripted.

You just need to get used to different numbers. Drop a zero. It doesn't need to be 30%, a 5% damage buff is massive.

[Rhaggnos]

I get that the point is for them to run in a stack, but I feel like there are better ways to go about that. Classes could have passive buffs to stack with others, while the main rotations could be trimmed and rebalanced into more fun, poignant cycles. Imo it's much more fun to spread out damage rotations into moderately low numbers working towards super high bursts, instead of, for example the 2 eyes Dragoon buff just allowing you to cram in spammy casts over and over.

I find it more interesting and fun to have every filler skill hit for a little less (say 30k instead of 43k) to then allow every 12 to 15 for a Stardiver proc to do 500k instead of like 120k. The overall output is the same, but it's way more satisfying to land a meaty blow, imo. Feel like the bar / eyes / charges you spend rly make a huge difference. As it stands the overall dmg of a DRK Spiller window is good, but spread out. The total amount is high, but each hit feels weak. It's a feedback thing. You do a huge animation and see the bar barely move 15% on a mob...

Also WoW went along this "only mythic raid matters" route and it became trash for it. I get that balance is done around the hardest content, but I think the rest of the game should not suffer for it. Even if that means adjusting it specifically, like using Echo or other modifiers to make solo and small grp content feel more meaningful while not breaking the endgame. Or, you know, simply balance Boss HP around the higher dmg / reduce trash mob HP pool drastically. Either way is fine. It just feels bad when your "ultimate" resource spenders barely do more dmg than your filler trash spells :P

[Enla]

You can get around the 2000 character limit with the edit button btw!