Please Bring Back DoTs and Debuffs

[Realism_Snide]

Just throwing my thoughts in a thread in the extremely rare chance that the devs see this. And just to voice my own displeasures with job changes in DPS ever since the start of Shadowbringers.

In all of the job fantasies out there in fantasy games, my favourite one to play as are annoyers. The ones where you watch your opponents die by stacking DoTs on them, or stop them in their tracks or make them more vulnerable with debuffs helpful to the whole party like slows, or lowering the boss' damage and defense. I enjoy managing all of those things, and I love being this annoying thorn in the boss' side that they just can't get rid of, and it makes me sad that the dev team is slowly phasing them out of the game with each patch and expansion. Slowly whittling away my favorit job fantasy.

Sure, there are still a lot of jobs with DoTs, but they only have 1. With the exception of BRD, and old SMN. But neither of their gameplays revolves around managing their DoTs anymore, if ever.

As for debuffs, the only one that exists nowadays on a DPS is Trick Attack (a defense down debuff), and the way it is now, it's practically written all over it that its gonna get the axe soon, and be replaced by the less satisfying Mug. Tanks have Reprisal and other damage down skills, but tank rotations are so simple they bore me, and GNB's big explosions just aren't my cup of tea.

So far, there isn't a single job to comes even close to the satisfaction that an annoyer brings to me. Invulning or kitchen sink-ing tank busters is the closest thing, but other wise, I find tanks boring to play (or just aren't my cup of tea). I can' heal to save anyone's life, and none of the existing DPS fulfill that job fantasy. I expected NIN would (cause every other ninja in rpg games DoT and debuff bosses) but FFXIV's NIN just looks more and more like a melee RDM with each expansion. :/ I don't care that its dps is terrible for balancing purposes. I just want a dps job that can whittle down a boss's HP bar with DoT management, and has a hefty debuffing kit.

[Flana]

Nothing quite brings me pleasure like doting up an enemy and watching them slowly die. There's just nothing like it. We need a DoT job, but the direction SE is going I doubt we'll get one. A shame, that's such a fun archtype to fill.

[Fryfor]

You are literally never going to get class based debuffs back that isn't trick attack.

Stop.

[Lyth]

I think that SMN stopped being a DoT-based caster this expansion to allow them to release a DoT-based caster next expansion.

I wouldn't mind seeing a Merchant-type ranged dps that DoTs up mobs by charging interest-over-time effects and cashes in those debts for burst.

[Supersnow845]

You are literally never going to get class based debuffs back that isn't trick attack.

Stop.

I mean chain exists

[VentVanitas]

Picking up classes like condi Scourge in GW2 reminded me once again that the lack of playstyles and player expression with jobs in XIV is shocking. No other playstyle except burst DPS isn't allowed to exist because they simply don't want to bother balancing anything else, as we see with PLD's changes in patch 6.21 frontloading more potency into its magic phase. I can only assume the 6.3 rework will follow suit.

[Lustre]

Ain't even just DoTs, all of the things that make RPGs what they are have been lost over time. Resistances, elements, debuffs, even stats dont really matter outside of week 1 savage and maybe ultimates. I hear people talk about old abilities and they sound so much more interesting than what we have now. All skills are losing their flavour over time, I've noticed it and I've only been around for one expansion. God knows how people who've been around since ARR feel

[Supersnow845]

Ain't even just DoTs, all of the things that make RPGs what they are have been lost over time. Resistances, elements, debuffs, even stats dont really matter outside of week 1 savage and maybe ultimates. I hear people talk about old abilities and they sound so much more interesting than what we have now. All skills are losing their flavour over time, I've noticed it and I've only been around for one expansion. God knows how people who've been around since ARR feel

As someone who’s played since legacy yeah the skill system has changed so much and become so bland that it’s honestly hard to be excited about any job anymore since they are all just flavours of each other

Meaningful skill interaction and stats were a good thing even if sometimes they missed the mark (like accuracy was bad but I appreciate they tried something with it even if it didn’t work)

[Renathras]

OP: They MIGHT someday make a new DoT Job - some people have argued that was part of their goal with all the pruning of DoTs used by existing Jobs and removing them from SMN entirely - but it's really hard to say since they also gave their reasoning as being opposed to DoTs (I don't remember the exact quote/reference, but it was something about it being more taxing server-side)

So it's hard to see them going back on that SO SOON.

Note the capitalized words. They tend to reconsider or somewhat go back on things over time. The game's systems/combat has changed over time. ARR/HW, SB, and ShB/EW have all had somewhat different encounter designs, mechanics, and Job designs, with some Jobs getting complete reworks if they were incompatible with the "new" model (SEE: BRD going into SB, SCH and MCH going into ShB, MNK and NIN in ShB, SMN going into EW, PLD in EW, etc; AST in basically every expansion, sometimes in the middle of them...)

So it's possible in 7.0, they decide to move back away from the 2 min business and go back towards the SB direction (which I would love; imo, that was the sweet spot/golden era in terms of Job designs, if not balance), which WOULD then allow for a more DoT focused Job. Though even if they DO go more in the SB direction, it doesn't guarantee one. And we aren't even guaranteed that direction, it's just kind of my personal hope that is maybe shared by others, but who knows.

I mean chain exists

Let's be real here: That's just because the Devs haven't figured out how to make a party buff that boosts Crit by 5%, but only crit CHANCE not crit DAMAGE (like a straight buff to the crit stat overall would do). As soon as they figure that out, Chain Strategem will become like Divination.

.

Ain't even just DoTs, all of the things that make RPGs what they are have been lost over time. Resistances, elements, debuffs, even stats dont really matter outside of week 1 savage and maybe ultimates. I hear people talk about old abilities and they sound so much more interesting than what we have now. All skills are losing their flavour over time, I've noticed it and I've only been around for one expansion. God knows how people who've been around since ARR feel

I mean, it's not all bad, nor unique to FFXIV. WoW's been around a long time, and seen the same thing, too. They've gone through something like 4 (maybe 5, I haven't played in 2 expansions and likely won't again) rounds of pruning abilities, and the only really out of the box abilities that still exist are because they're (a) completely useless in combat and (b) so iconic it would hurt too much to remove them (e.g. Shaman Farsight; and I think even that was nerfed)

It seems to be happening in every MMO, and in RPGs more generally (and gaming even more generally) as focus shifts over time away from RP and flavor and more to everything being in service to combat, with social type abilities being relegated to emotes instead. Like FFXIV's Performance is cool, but in some old games like Star Wars Galaxies, you could actually have people perform that buffed people, and likewise Bards in Everquest. I don't know if "dumbing down" is the right term, but "the dumbing down" of MMOs, RPGs, gaming, and society/entertainment in general just seems to be the way of the future. (I personally hope it's not, but...we live in a world that likes instant gratification, mobile games, etc etc...)

I've been playing since...2.3 or so? Whatever patch was the one before NIN. Most of the changes were so gradual over time, it wasn't super noticeable, but when I compare now to then directly, it is kind of crazy.

Cross-class skills where you had to level other classes to get them (e.g. leveling THM to get Swiftcast) - or even just leveling one class to 30 and another to 15 in order to even get the Jobs unlocked (and how that limited what Cross-class stuff you could equip) is so lost now.

Not so much elemental resistances, though - that was never really used at all in 2.0.

FFXI (which FFXIV 1.0 was strongly based on) is still in operation, though, and I hear does a lot of that stuff. But it's too hard for me to get into considering the full price sub and that everyone just says level with Trusts - which defeats the point of a group-focused old school MMO experience to me, honestly...

[Reinhardt_Azureheim]

Nothing I want to add to the conversation, other than clearing up something...

Let's be real here: That's just because the Devs haven't figured out how to make a party buff that boosts Crit by 5%, but only crit CHANCE not crit DAMAGE (like a straight buff to the crit stat overall would do). As soon as they figure that out, Chain Strategem will become like Divination.

This already exists. Three times in the current version of the game, actually.





In fact, we had buffs like Straight Shot granting +10% crit rate while maintained for 30 seconds, which got removed though.

So no, Chain Stratagem will not turn into a "crit rate version of Divination" just for being a debuff.