Why is everyone anxious about a PLD Rework?

[Shurrikhan]

...

Step 1: Look at the commonly understood explanation for why jobs are getting easier (based upon developer comments and who actually benefits from the given changes, especially within the scope of the given development philosophy). Promptly dismiss it.

Step 2: Create a hypothetical demographic of players, which you explicitly note "literally does not exist and never has."

Step 3: Instead blame the latter literally inexistant group, and by extension any theorycrafters, optimizers, etc., on the basis that despite their being the one group wholly unburdened by the "problems" SE addressed in their changes their optimizations must have dumbed down the jobs.

Step 4: ?????? Profit???

Not that it matters, but... wut, mate?

Because a long time ago, WoW decided to go that route and as a result mundane combat in that game is a fucking *million* times better than XIV's. "Hit the button when it lights up" is not deep or nuanced gameplay, but it's not trying to be - it's just trying to keep you from falling asleep in your chair, and it succeeds at that. It's flashy and hitting the button when it lights up gives haha happy monke brain feelings, and that's all it needs to do. If you're going to go for a simplistic gameplay experience, then at least fucking do it right.

But... almost no part of what makes WoW's combat decent comes simply from "hit the button when it lights up". It comes generally from their APLs being contextual to upcoming uptime. The only part "lit button go!" procs play into that is that there's an actual frequent difference there in playing around a 33% chance of a 100% effect proc vs. a guaranteed bonus effect of 33% strength due to skill interactions.

[Rolder50]

I didn't practice. I didn't read up on strats or optimizations or things like that. I just showed up and hit buttons the exact same way I'd been hitting buttons the whole time I'd been playing that tier. People were acting like you had to be dedicated and work really hard to get orange parses, and here I was getting one by basically just mashing buttons?

Sure sounds like *someone* in your party was checking The Balance and the like to figure out that these cheese strats were

[Shurrikhan]

Yeah, basically. I stopped going to The Balance at all once I both realized how far up their own ass those chronically online types are. I used to believe a lot of what they said until I *effortlessly* parsed orange in e10s, without ever having spent a moment practicing on striking dummies or anything like that. One or two steps beyond mashing buttons and I'm parsing a number that the system should say belongs to the best of the very best? Kind of a watershed moment. Made me realize that the entire parsing thing was a crock of shit.

I'll reiterate that Square-Enix are cowards. The number of players who *genuinely care* about parses, about the tiny differences in numbers, are so minuscule that they could kill all of their accounts tonight and probably not notice much of a blip in revenues. Yet these players are seemingly the ones they're building the entire combat system around. It's madness.

World First for our very first Ultimate... featured a DRK at a time when DRK was at its very worst. His reasoning: "Idk. I just like playing DRK." The changes made would make no sense if they were being made just for the top tier, the theorycrafters, etc. And most of the ones actually going for an orange parse aren't the ones arguing over this or that job having 0.5% higher theoretical rDPS despite being the sole group for whom such differences would actually matter.

Nothing about Balance theorycrafters working out the best way to leverage Overheat turned it into the shallow shtick MCH has been since Shadowbringers. Nothing about their figuring out the best ways to open as Monk removed Greased Lightning. By their count, after all, it was already balanced; whatever "clunk" was there didn't matter to them, because they'd already accepted and worked around it.

I don't particularly give a damn about that community, either, but it's laughable that you could lay the devs' changes made over time towards accessibility-(even-if-at-cost-to-identity-and-skill-ceiling) at their feet.

[Absurdity]

Nothing about Balance theorycrafters working out the best way to leverage Overheat turned it into the shallow shtick MCH has been since Shadowbringers. Nothing about their figuring out the best ways to open as Monk removed Greased Lightning. By their count, after all, it was already balanced; whatever "clunk" was there didn't matter to them, because they'd already accepted and worked around it.

Pretty much this, the parsing community never really cared about or advocated for job changes to make it easier for them to parse, they just took whatever was there and optimized the hell out of it.

Which is both good and bad, they don't really care if a job is complex or braindead, if it has flavour or not, they'll take whatever the devs give them and run with it.

[fulminating]

Bloodbath was a marauder skill, inner beast had a massive hp drain effect ~300% or so.

I think you fundamentally misunderstand the arcanist/summoner/scholar relationship in this game. Through how they played it was very clear that while they shared a starting point, they’d both developed into their own niche. Currently pets are nearly dead, arcanist has no capstone skill and summoner is designed for a nodding bird desk toy.

Ultimately it doesn’t matter an iota what they say the jobs are if they keep removing what makes them feel that way. Dark knight being a prime example for reasons that shouldn’t have to be elaborated on.

[Duskane]

honestly bit lame bulwark is just blocking and no mit,
yeah they put mit on sheltron but gauge is still built up by auto attacks, if they let holy spirit build gauge again it be fine imo.

[True-to-Caesar]

honestly bit lame bulwark is just blocking and no mit,
yeah they put mit on sheltron but gauge is still built up by auto attacks, if they let holy spirit build gauge again it be fine imo.

It’s homogenization, but half done here : GNB has camouflage and it gives parry + a bit of damage reduction. However GNB has less sustain. No idea if war has something similar. At any rate, it doesn’t feel I’ll play PLD again.

[Gserpent]

It’s homogenization, but half done here : GNB has camouflage and it gives parry + a bit of damage reduction. However GNB has less sustain. No idea if war has something similar. At any rate, it doesn’t feel I’ll play PLD again.

GNB has equivalent sustain, IIRC. Heart of Corundum is less total healing potency than Sheltron, but they have a LOT of healing potency on their filler combo, plus two charges of Aurora. I think Divine Might allowing more frequent spell use will make PLD closer in sustain than it was before, but keep in mind that Clemency is still completely unusable for all practical intents and purposes, so factoring in Aurora puts GNB ahead. Also keep in mind that GNB's sustain comes on the second GCD of the cycle while PLD's comes in on the fourth GCD at the earliest. GNB can 1-2-1-2-1-2 for exceptionally high sustain if they really need to.

[True-to-Caesar]

GNB has equivalent sustain, IIRC. Heart of Corundum is less total healing potency than Sheltron, but they have a LOT of healing potency on their filler combo, plus two charges of Aurora. I think Divine Might allowing more frequent spell use will make PLD closer in sustain than it was before, but keep in mind that Clemency is still completely unusable for all practical intents and purposes, so factoring in Aurora puts GNB ahead. Also keep in mind that GNB's sustain comes on the second GCD of the cycle while PLD's comes in on the fourth GCD at the earliest. GNB can 1-2-1-2-1-2 for exceptionally high sustain if they really need to.

You get heals with Confiteor combo+ holy spirit/circle and Sheltron can be used way more often than Aurora on a 60s cooldown. PLD does have better sustain overall. It’s very noticeable when the healer is dead or bad.

[Likethewind]

Hopefully they do what they did to all classes what they did to healers.