Do you think Melee DPS should have a weak AoE around lv16 for the very first dungeon?

[Bsrking5]

Melee should have AoE earlier for the sake of design consistency more than anything. It wouldn't make things that much quicker because you either have newbie tanks who only single pull, or tanks who know how to do some of that weird cheesier stuff that some of the earlier dungeons have (de-aggroing in copperbell comes to mind).

Works in hard too, its so dumb cheesy mechanics

[Arkdra]

I can safely tell you that most player AoE's appear to be available at level 18, except for Dancer, where they're available at level 15. At today's MSQ leveling XP, that's about when a majority of players gain the ability to actually run dungeons these days. So, no worries. Melee don't have AoEs until much later, but then, they do much more single mob damage to make up for it. It's fairly fun as Machinist/Bard/Dancer in Tam-Tara Deepcroft. That being said, running the same instances as Dragoon/Pugilist/Rogue is just as easy at similar levels, so, no, AoEs aren't necessary at that point. I'd rather melee DPS get comfortable with single-mob positioning attacks before being handed AoEs.

Melees don't get positionals until 26ish with the exception of monk so good news, nobody is learning anything and your dungeons are slower for it.

[Shironeko_Narunyan]

Wonder if we could throw a wrench into all of this... something like the more monsters are around the more damage a monster is susceptible from single target attacks. With a non-linear growth curve perhaps. Such like with a huge ball of death you could eviscerate a few mobs, then AoE comes back into priority power BUT single target isn't a garbage choice like it is currently.

Yes I just came up with a crazy way to make low level problem fit more lol, but I also think it has the implication of improving some trash combat depth. Currently we all have two buttons, maybe some oGCD aoe, to use. Besides the now the idea you might hunt out a slightly scarier monster and pop them, you also have the opportunity to build a job without the proverbial required AoE 'rotation'. I suppose you could make it a job unique trait if you wanted to be really wild...

Weird I suppose but I don't love how rigid we're aiming to be for convenience- though I don't say that out of lack of understanding either. Feeling suboptimal or slow isn't a great feeling. No one wants to be so unbalanced they're frustrated at what they play or who they're playing with.

That would lead to: the more you pull, the easier it gets. That doesn't make sense at all.
If anything, the opposite should be the case: The more mobs you pull, the more mechanics they do, and the more frequently, for more damage.

Think about it, you fight a large group of them at once, have them be a bit more coordinated, so they can actually overwhelm you.
Why? Because everything else looks incredibly like "game" instead of adventure with risks and danger.

[DPZ2]

Melees don't get positionals until 26ish with the exception of monk so good news, nobody is learning anything and your dungeons are slower for it.

Don't worry, I have 90 minutes to complete those instances.

I haven't run a sub-40 dungeon instance in over 25 minutes for the last 6 years, so it's an "impatient you" problem, not a player issue.

[Shougun]

That would lead to: the more you pull, the easier it gets. That doesn't make sense at all.
If anything, the opposite should be the case: The more mobs you pull, the more mechanics they do, and the more frequently, for more damage.

Think about it, you fight a large group of them at once, have them be a bit more coordinated, so they can actually overwhelm you.
Why? Because everything else looks incredibly like "game" instead of adventure with risks and danger.

It's a weird mechanic so I can see why it has that hiccup like feeling but take a moment with it, I think you'll see that it doesn't really change that paradigm that already exists where more is better. It does however change how a player, or the developer, may approach their skills.

/Already/ it's true the more you pull the easier it gets. This is /already/ true. Your aoe skills are worth more if you pull more, vastly increasing their potential output. Pull more, it's easier, it's better. If it wasn't you'd not pull wall to wall.

This is /already true/.

What the idea does is simply change how each job may HAVE to have the same sort of AoE skills or that each job would always approach AoE the same way (or that it's such a huge issue of a job paces differently than another). The occasional may be shifting from single to AoE or AoE to single given opportunity of values - even when it's more than two monsters. Currently if a monster is kind of a pain in a huge ball of death you'd still likely just use your AoE because the potency value is extreme. Now you might be like, huge ball.. actually I'm going to take advantage of that and focus that one monster.

Both on each player level and in a general sense of job design.. you now have a bit more leeway of choice. Although it does really feel weird that the more monsters around the stronger your single target spells get lol. Normally you'd think "the more allies an enemy has the stronger they are together, teamwork, unity! Captain Planet!".

So.. I did think about it . I know it's counter to the usual logic you'd think of teamwork, but to your first statement it does actually already make sense as it's already true.

There are other ways to address this but I'm not sure how well they'd work.. like if you make monsters a lot stronger that doesn't mean people will stop unless they're so strong it's impossible. Otherwise a healer will just be stressed more to heal (and tank using cooldowns), changing the culture of our game is going to be very very challenging, we just may expect more rather than it functionally changing anything in approach (in general), if neither use them then it's like each trash pack is a mini boss lol. And if it isn't tuned strong enough it wont stop the expectation of wall to wall... just make it more yoyo. Of course that may be a good result for healers, since they'd actually have to heal quite a bit.. so maybe someone is like "yo dude that is a win", but wasn't really "fully" the point I was making with the weird idea. I already think changing how gear scales is going to help improve the need to heal, I don't believe at least yet there needs more for that (I do think it's important healers are more needed to heal, otherwise theyre likely to feel more bored with glare spam, but I would be concerned if the balance change is so strict that a wall to wall pull is impossibru without being savage + tier player because I think that might cause too much in the way of cultural and player stress, my imo).

IF there is more gates, that'll just make people more annoyed for another reason.

With the weird idea above you'd be able to break away (slightly) from the AoE design addiction. The most optimal choice in a huge ball of death may be single target, or it may not be single target but single target may offer QoL by offing a particularly nasty monster (or at least not a "god awful choice" like it is currently), or a job may even shrug at the idea it HAS TO HAVE A COMPLETE AOE ROTATION OR ELSE IT SUCKS. Lol. No AoE skills would still suck buuut you might see a job that forgoes the classic super spam option that we all currently have (doesn't have a few generic abilities set aside and specifically dedicated to being the rotation counterpart of single target, rather it's just one whole, larger, kit dedicated to the process of elimination).

Still weird tho... Maybe as I suggested fit a specific job as a gimmick rather than a concept as a whole, that way it can have a theme and not feel so weird, but it was just an idea to break away from this urge to make every job have parity pacing on the same archetypal skills while avoiding huge imbalances. (Honestly probably would have fit Reaper very well)