Skill Distribution in Jobs

[Anhra]

Greetings and thanks for looking this up.

I'd like to talk here about the way how Jobs overall, recieve their Skills upon progressing/leveling up through the Game, i think it should get a rework in a way which i think, will benefit the game for many reasons. I am not saying that the way how things currently are, are so bad that they need adressing, but my point with this, is that if a System like i am going to mention would be inplimented, it would bring more benefits to gameplay than the current one has.

So much for the introduction, now lets get to the Bisquits, shall we?

Heres the thing, From the way how early game of FFXIV is presented (ARR/HW) in terms of Jobs, before you even get your Job Stone, you only end up with roughly 8-9 Skills from your Class, up to 4 Role Skills and arround 2 passives on average. I think this needs to be adressed and changed, since the early Game of a MMO, has a HUGE impact on how Players will overall perform once they reach endgame.



here are my suggestions on the matter at hand:

Overall:
- Jobs as well as Classes, should be designed in a way, where you have ALL your active Skills (without including Upgrades or charges on the matter) should have been obtained by the time you hit lvl60 or lv70 (Since we got arround 20-30 active Skills to use currently with 30, or being near it, being a sufficient cap on the max amount since many People seem to dislike the thought of having too many Skills). Anything past that Point, can be designed in a way, where we accumulate Jobpoints for Passives to invest into active Skills (such as giving charges or straight up Upgrades of Skills. The latter of course, shouldnt start off at lv60/70, but with lv30 already by the time you get your Job Stone.

- As things currently stand, we got roughly counted, 9-15 passive Abilities at the very least during the entire Leveling Journey of a Job. If we inpliment the System i mentioned before, it would mean that we recieve a Jobpoint for passive every 1-2 levels.

- The amount of selectable passives WILL be far greater than the Points you can spent. That way, it will be easier to inpliment new Skills during Expansion releases, simply by turning active Skills into a passive Upgrade for a already existing Spell (for example, Bio from SCH, can either be upgraded into Bio 2 up to Biolysis OR upgraded into Miasma which may do a shorter DoT with stronger Potency, but less total damage compared to Biolysis, but has the advantage of applying a debuff).

Part 1/2

[Anhra]

Healers:
- introduce them to their Buffs and mitigation tools alot earlier in the game, rather than in Endgame content only. Skills such as Expedient, Aquaveil, Collective Unconcious and so on, should be introduced way earlier in the Game so that Players learn the importance of said Skills early on and get familar with them.

- better or even multiple ways to cast Res. While swiftcast Res is good by any means, i think it would be far better in design, if Healers had also a Res Skill (on a VERY long CD, like 10+Min) that revives the Healer himself if he dies during the duration of the Skill back to full HP/MP.

- design Healers in a way, where they dont have (outside of passive Skilltree adjustments on the Players side), a overbearing amount of Healing abilities, Currently they have 14-18 of those and i think half the number with currect adjustments on Potencies, casttime and CD would cover for every content just as well.

-give the Esuna effect to Physick, Cure 1, (Aspected) benefic and (Eukrasian) Diagnosis.

- just my own opinion on this, but AST should become HoT focused.

Tanks:
- same as Healers, certain Skills should also be introduced alot earlier on, such as Sheltron, Cover, Oblation/TBN or Aurora (on Auroras matter, only if it grants heals by precentage)

- Shirk should be reworked in a way, where it diverts ALL enmity to the target and is avaiable for tanks at lv10-16 already (so that Tank swap can be introduced way earlier into the game)

- The amount of Tank CD's such as Rampart and its clones, should be reduced and instead, we get 1-2 CD's that reduce damage, that can be used in return more frequently (one being


The Deeps:
- should get Skills such as Mantra from MNK or Tactician from MCH (which only exist to ease the burden of Healing) removed and replaced with Skills that fit the Job more.

- Rotations, should be designed in a way, where they work similar like in PvP, on one Button (ONLY when DPS Jobs get compensated with additional new Skills for active use, to cover for the "loss" of pressable Buttons)

- Res from SMN and RDM, while being a powerful tool for preventing Wipes, should be more limited (like Res being on a 2Min or longer CD). The reason for that, is that Ressing is a Healers duty and Healers should be, better at this than a Caster Dps.


Why even bother doing this?:

- The reason why certain Skills should be avaiable early on, is so that new Players learn about their importance early on. This could in theory, even improve Gameplay, even in ARR/HW
- One of the reasons why, is to allow customisation to a certain degree from the Players side.
- Changes such as this, would even allow Dungeon mechanics early on, to be more intense without even being too overbearingly difficult ( a example for this, would be like the old Coincounter fight where he had nontelegraphed attacks. Imagine during that fight, having a SCH that could use Expedient).

What do you guys thing of such changes? Do you think anything would improve or even get worse? How would you change the way how Skills were distributed if you would get a say in this?

[Grimoire-M]

Healers don't really need their current skills downshifted any more. They need more DPS skills at low levels to emphasize what they're supposed to be doing between their healing so they're drawn into exploring that section of XIV's combat (which then trait upgrades with the usual DPS skill upgrades past ARR so we don't over-complicate it). ARR and HW's healing balance is actually good with the current toolkits and the newer tools do come at appropriate levels. The problem is tutorialization. People aren't using new options that are often redundant if you know what you're doing, but if you don't you'll probably need them way more than you realize. That's the issue.

Tanks are similarly fine. Get them to put on good gear and they will be okay for 1-30. After that they actually have to start pressing mitigation, but if they wore bad gear pre-30 they probably learned to do that, so one way or another they 'should' learn a problem. What SE should be doing is teaching them to put on good gear. Specifically if it's as an alt job.

Some DPS do need it, but it mostly comes down to lack of core tools that really should be available early, like at least one AoE GCD on all DPS by level 30. The transformation that happens from certain classes to their job equivalents during ARR's also hampers these toolkits quite a bit. Most jobs here are getting some of those core tools in that 30-50 section. They're not getting it earlier because their arc hasn't reached that point yet.

Really what's a problem is Melee and Tanks all feel practically the same at these levels. 1-2-3 dominates the level 1-30 process and it makes every single class suffer. But it does work very well for a completely new player on their first go, if they're willing to engage with it. And that's the intended audience for that content.

Of all the jobs or roles I haven't mentioned, Summoner's the only job that really sucks now, but that's a problem with the new rework, not the levelling process. It sucked more in ShB because of bad tuning. Stormblood Summoner was well balanced throughout its process in a way that players completely ignored because tutorials are hard.

I think the real problem is just that ARR is slow without the "Road to" buffs and while it is good at teaching players to pay attention (unless you get a vet blitzing because it's SLOW AF compared to current XIV fights) it doesn't teach them how to play very well. And the only way to fix that is to use job quests for tutorial content, which isn't happening. I'd like it if players got access to better rested exp bonuses for reaching each expansion's level cap, so that after getting their mains to endgame they could just permanently have access to "Road to 50" levels of boosts for any jobs they left in ARR, and have rested EXP apply to quests like that boost does too.

[Anhra]

On the matter of Healers: Thats why i suggested reducing the overall amount of Healung abilities. On WHM matter, to provide a example, Cure 1 could simply upgrade just like any other skill into Cure 2 and then 3, and that would in theory, already make Room for 2 additional Spells which could be Dps Abilities.

On the matter of ARR, it is indeed, very slow and thats why downshifting Skills would be a good addition. Since it directly makes the Player more powerful, simply for having more skills avaiable, it can also be used as a opportunity to buff overworld, as well as ARR/HW Dungeons (especially the former) since most enemies in that content, just do weak AA dmg and easily dodgeable cones or small circles. It would be great if they also get more skills/dmg or HP and said changes, would give reason to do so.

The pacing on the EXP matter, isnt as bad as People claim it to be, for MMO standards. Many MMOs are way grindier and give far less overall EXP. FFXIV is extremely generous in that regard.