Why is everyone anxious about a PLD Rework?

[Shurrikhan]

Because the past is prologue and the FFXIV has an abysmal track record with re-works

• Healers in general
• Old Bow Mage Bards
• DRK becoming a Warrior clone
• Summoner
• Samurai

It's almost always 3 steps back, 1 step forward.

Only the one (bolded) among those results saw those leaps in such a discrete step, though. For most, it's hardly even a whole step at a time, and most of them circling the objective or at a diagonal.


Take Bow/Gun Mages, for instance.

ARR Bards: We don't like having lower rDPS on the mere basis that we have perfect, unrestrained mobility -- that usually ends up stupidly excessive anyways. It's nice that one or two of us will have guaranteed slots anyways, but we'd like some fflogs parity.
HW Devs: Okay, here's a way to dump your excess mobility for tighter rDPS parity. Outside of cleave situations, it won't make a huge outside of your CD burst, and we won't reduce your floor, but there you go.

The aim was fine; the issue was the tuning (including insofar as the cooldown of WM/GB) and, as so often in XIV, the quirks of the code/implementation (in that you'd be locked into the challenge-increasing state after consuming the cooldown [as per Cleric Stance], rather than locked out of reentering that state [as per BotD, Enochian, etc.]).


Similarly, had Tsubame-Gaeshi just been faintly more lenient (e.g., via a 5-second holding period, until one generated another Sen, until another Iaijutsu was ready to be cast, or even holding the most recently cast Iaijutsu indefinitely) and Meditation had reduced the Meditation stacks cost of the next Shoha instead of granting (potentially/likely redundant) Meditation stacks directly, later Shadowbringers would have been far better than Stormblood's -- more accessible, yet with greater total depth and visual appeal.

Critiques not getting into the fine details is how we often end up with "Just do more of the same! (differently viewed/defined by players and devs)" resulting in additions that actually reduce gameplay or "It all sucks (even if really just due to some very small, correctable issues)" and large reforms where none were necessary, let alone beneficial as responses to the problems most often mentioned by anyone looking at them more concretely.


Disclaimer: The (d)evolution of XIV healers are their own S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat-level mutant beast I neither wholly understand nor expect my sanity would survive an understanding of.