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.