After reading the patch notes, I guess I won't play SAM anymore

[YukiB]

You can argue without being insulting, that's not hard. Yes it did have some advantages but it's now much smoother to play and feels better when you aren't swapping targeting mechanics between each skill.

Sorry, agree to disagree. I enjoyed SAM's dance between targeted cones and circles. It was an acceptable change when they made our basic combo starter a circle instead of a cone, because we still had to dance around for Tenka Goken. Now we just stand in the middle of a pack and mash 1-2-1-3-4 over and over. No Kaiten weaves to buff Tenka, no movement to line Tenka up, just combo combo finisher standing in one place. Not to mention the straight nerf to Kaeshi: Tenka Goken.

Same for WAR's cone. I loved the extra range it had and the way you could line it up to grab some packs faster than other tanks could. I always recommended WAR as an entry level tank not only because it's the easiest to play and toughest to kill, but because the cone taught new players how to bunch mobs up. Now every sprout tank is going to stand still and AOE in a circle with mobs standing all over the place. Great.

Dungeons are already braindead enough. Why kill one of the last remaining elements that requires any thought or skill? Why even bother with changes to AOE? It's not relevant in any serious content.

[HisShadowX]

I get what you're saying, kind of? If you want complexity, go to another game? It sort of does feel that way at times; That playing another game entirely is your only recourse.

I just wonder what the end result of all the simplification is going to look like. This current system is already sort of unrecognizable, if, like you mentioned, have been playing during the cross class era & before.

I have been playing MMORPG's since AOL created the first GUI MMORPG Neverwinter Nights. I saw the advent of Everquest and then World of Warcraft. Pretty much after World of Warcraft any MMORPG that catered to a crowd for hardcore players went free2play or failed.

The only old MMORPG made for hardcore players that's still running mainly due to rich and powerful players fund it with real life money is Eve with one battle costing players over $300,000.00 USD of lost money. It would be nice for hardcore players to have games made for them, but again the problem is they often fail or the games are full of dead servers with barely anyone playing. So they come to games like this that are more populated and then demand features that would cause millions of paying customers to quit. Most people might not remember the mass firings at BioWare Austin when EA & BioWare advertised the game as casual friendly and they launched the game to appease Star War Galaxies refugees. Then they held a 'Guild Summit' in which they paid for Hardcore guilds to go to Austin and listened to their feedback only and promised never to make a Dungeon/Duty Finder system.

Two million people left in that month once the game was made even harder and all the heads of BioWare Austin either were fired or resigned. FFXIV 1.0 was based on appeasing this minority of consumers and they had to close down the game and completely rebuilt it.

"DPS healers barely healing"

Ah, we have another DPS main who doesn't know how support classes work. Opinion discarded.

From my profile:

Character
William Hart
World
Jenova
Main Class
Gladiator Lv 90

Join Date
Sep 2013
Location
Ul'dah
Posts
191

I mainly main tanks and from there as I choose Healers over DPS. I am currently however, leveling a Red Mage.

[Lunalepsy]

If you like games like Dark souls or think every game is easy even on Very Hard or Hardcore mode chances are this patch is not meant for you people sort of like how FFXIV ARR is not meant for players who liked FFXIV 1.0.

These changes like Healers actually getting increased healing after pissing off the majority of their consumers with DPS Healers (Mainly Sages) going around barely healing. This is a welcome chance like the removal of the cross class system which I know you people loved. I know your a new guy but its was a painful system that forced you to level other classes to get abilities, you would of loved that system.

So glad someone brought up 1.0! Even if design was clunky, gameplay was somewhat challenging. Of course, people do not like that kind of framework anymore, so the game has been simplified for the masses.

[HisShadowX]

So glad someone brought up 1.0! Even if design was clunky, gameplay was somewhat challenging. Of course, people do not like that kind of framework anymore, so the game has been simplified for the masses.

It would be nice to have a Pay MMORPG where to have to pay real money for everything because thats the only way an MMORPG can survive thats made for those people. Star Citzen is pretty much Buy2Win but the Hardcore Minority hate that sort of gameplay and want to gain things via an "ACCOMPLISHMENT" so I don't see how they will get a new game made for them.

[Semirhage]

I mainly main tanks and from there as I choose Healers over DPS. I am currently however, leveling a Red Mage.

Cool. You do know that mindlessly mashing the nuke button is what skilled healers do, yes?

[ryouma17]

and nothing of value was lost

[Wolwosh]

Kinda blows my mind they make changes to ensure reapers are guaranteed their plentiful harvest stack while removing what little party synergy Samurai had as a selfish dps

[MikkoAkure]

So glad someone brought up 1.0! Even if design was clunky, gameplay was somewhat challenging. Of course, people do not like that kind of framework anymore, so the game has been simplified for the masses.

FFXIV 1.0 had a really badly implemented stamina system for combat and was not fun for anyone. You started battle with a set amount of stamina and each attack used it up and there was no auto-attack. When you were all dry, you just sat and waited for it to regenerate to use another thrust. Archers as well as classes with throwing weapons had to keep track of their ammo. Your attacks had a “sweet spot” range where you had to be a specific distance away to deal good damage depending on your weapon.

Just because something is “complex” doesn’t mean it’s necessarily good.

There were some neat things though. 1.0 had a mechanic where classes had specific abilities that could take off enemy body parts and limit their special attacks, but fighting individual world mobs has long lost its importance since 1.0.

That being said, the slow and steady homogenization of the jobs feels like SE trying to put a bandaid on combat as the levels increase every expansion, more jobs and abilities are added, and more players join. They’ve been getting rid of anything that makes jobs difficult to balance at a cost of identity. I think SE needs to overhaul the entire combat system again like how Yoshi-P did from 1.0 to 1.23.

[Aelin_Ashryver]

I really hated reading those patch notes, the potency nerfs even with guaranteed crit feels poopy, you synergise worse with other jobs now because of it and ALSO they mentioned specifically astro and monk getting changes and they have nothing more than 1 liners each? What the heck! And they even kept in the kaiten removal.. that really sucks the big one. It really does feel like losing stormblood astro all over again. Summoner is still doing and predicted with changes to still do crap dps. Why are they still so low as a caster with less utility than rdm?

[Gemina]

My impression from LL reviews:
Devs: "We are going to add auto crit to some SAM skills."
Me: COOL!

Revelation from reading patch notes:
Devs: "...but we're reducing their potency"
Me: ...oh.

So yeah, while a lot of players are in a tussle over Circle: Goken and the monumental impact that surely will bring, I can't help but wonder what an extensive laundry list of potency changes means for SAM, and also that the removal of Kaiten quite literally does nothing to alleviate SAM's button bloat issues.