Please stop removing Damage Over Time effects from every job, add more complexity

[Shurrikhan]

only jobs that lost their dots so far have been summoner and paladin. BLM, SAM, BRD and the 4 healers are all still there and the devs have said nothing about removing those

Just by the time Endwalker was released, not counting actions taken from outside the job's own kit (though we likely should count them), more than half of all jobs have lost DoTs over the years:

• JOB: DoTs lost (portion of total DoTs possessed)
• WAR: 1 (100%)
• DRK: 1 (50%, if including Salted Earth)
• WHM: 2 (67%)
• SCH: 3 (75%)
• AST: 1 (50%)
• SMN: 3-5 (75%-80%, depending on whether one counts pet DoT, let alone the pet AAs as a DoT)
• BRD: 1 (33%)
• MCH: 1 (100%)
• MNK: 1 (50%, though Fracture was requisite, so this probably should be considered 2 and 67%)
• NIN: 2 (100%)
• DRG: 1 (50%)

NIN didn't have a dot to keep up. notice how i didn't use GNB as an example of jobs that kept their dots for the same reason

It did. It had two, in fact, Mutilate (a lone GCD that broke combos) and Shadowfang (a 2nd-step combo finisher). The first DoT was removed in Stormblood, and the second DoT was in 5.1 (not even 5.0).

[RyuDragnier]

only jobs that lost their dots so far have been summoner and paladin. BLM, SAM, BRD and the 4 healers are all still there and the devs have said nothing about removing those

WAR lost a dot (Fracture). DRK lost a dot (Scourge). SCH lost multiple dots (Miasma, Miasma II, Shadow Flare). WHM lost a dot (Aero III was its own thing previously). MNK lost a dot (Touch of Death). DRG lost a dot (Phlebotomize). NIN lost 2 dots (Mutilate and Shadowfang).

You get the point. It's been so long in the making that it hasn't been noticed by anybody but those who have been here since HW.

[Rithy255]

I just wonder what goring blades going to do now instead?
It can't just give you "holy spirit" unless royal authority is removed? I feel like they're likely going to replace it with a 10% damage buff similar to warriors, Likely remove FOF and rename it as the damage buff you get from Goring, they might make royal authority give you one holy spirit instead of atonement (atonement looks likely to be removed thinking about it...). It seems pretty weird that you're also getting magic outside or req? Idk if/how that will also effect your req window

I personally don't think the DOT matters in the long run I liked old PLD's rotation but I can understand why they're doing it, I'm just confused what PLD's rotation is going to look like now...? I'm really confused what they're going to do with it.

[ForsakenRoe]

I just wonder what goring blades going to do now instead?
It can't just give you "holy spirit" unless royal authority is removed? I feel like they're likely going to replace it with a 10% damage buff similar to warriors, Likely remove FOF and rename it as the damage buff you get from Goring, they might make royal authority give you one holy spirit instead of atonement (atonement looks likely to be removed thinking about it...). It seems pretty weird that you're also getting magic outside or req? Idk if/how that will also effect your req window

I personally don't think the DOT matters in the long run I liked old PLD's rotation but I can understand why they're doing it, I'm just confused what PLD's rotation is going to look like now...? I'm really confused what they're going to do with it.

Goring>HS costs MP, RA>Atonement regenerates MP, job done probably. Assuming I'm anywhere close to the mark for their new design, the answer to 'Why would you want to RA' is 'to generate MP to use Goring>HS'. It also fixes the 63s loop dilemma, by giving PLD two 4step (10s) combos to build a 60s loop off of. Assuming Req stays as it is, the 4 HS > Conf > Blades is 8GCDs, or 20s (thanks to skillspeed not working), but I think they'll change that. Instead, I expect Req is deleted, or reworked to a hard hitting GCD. My money's on GCD, because then it can upgrade at 80 into Confiteor. No longer using 4 HS in a row, we'd have 5 Goring/RA combos to build the rotation with, then the 4 step combo of Confiteor (a standalone 60s CD), Blade of Faith/Truth/The other one, and that's the last 10s combo, to round out to 60s. It'd also mean, assuming 3rd GCD raidbuffs, we'd go Fast, Riot, (raidbuff start) Goring, HS, Confiteor, BladeBladeBlade, Fast, Riot (raidbuff end here or before riot, depends on skillspeed), meaning we very easily get our hard hits like the HS and the full blade combo inside raidbuffs. As it is now, if we used Req on the exact same frame the raidbuffs go out, we'd miss the last Blade because Skillspeed doesn't help with the spells, and animation lock would screw us.

With this, downtime from boss (eg High Concept) would actually be completely fine, as PLD would keep regenerating it's 'gauge' while other tanks are left crying cos they cant hit the boss. This would mean, because of regen, you might swap a 60s loop from 3 Goring>HS combos / 2 RA>Atone combos, to FOUR Goring>HS / 1 RA>Atone. My main question is whether Divine Might procs work like Raiju (use it right away or lose it, essentially a forced 4 step combo), or can be used whenever (or even stacked), as if they can be stacked and saved, it'd mean we're just gonna still use eg 3 Holy Spirits inside raidbuffs, then Confiteor/Blades, which will definitely not look like 3 Fell Cleaves, then Primal Rend, then 2 Inner Chaos no sir

[Lyth]

I'm not really sure why you would want to use modular arithmetic to describe DoT truncation. Unless you just encountered it in an introductory number theory course and were really excited about the concept or something.

You probably could design a DoT focused job from the ground up that conforms to the 'rules' of job synergy. Time magic would be a great way to do it. Perhaps you freeze your DoTs so that they continue to tick without the timer changing, and then accelerate all the timers to do burst or deal with phase changes. I don't think that clipping is that much of a design problem with DoTs either, as you can simply design timers that can be extended twice in a row. It would be interesting if the focus wasn't on actually recasting DoTs, but rather utilizing a set of buffs to build up the momentum going into burst.

[Shurrikhan]

I'm not really sure why you would want to use modular arithmetic to describe DoT truncation. Unless you just encountered it in an introductory number theory course and were really excited about the concept or something.

DoTs surpass filler damage after a number of seconds. If the jumps make it so you're losing the ability to get that DoT's number of seconds to redeem itself, it screws over the DoT user. Call it modular math or whatever else you like, but it's not as if it's anything advanced. It was just one of many spitball ways to approximate relative value.

The larger point, though, was merely that if a job is balanced around being able to use a given DoT every so often, and now there's a forced break in that that pace that reduces its uptime (or number of effective casts within a given total fight length), simply switching to a less screwed over alternative isn't about to bail out a DoT job. Just like having a jump occur right as your burst CDs or combo finisher (before the combo timers were so extended) would.

You probably could design a DoT focused job from the ground up that conforms to the 'rules' of job synergy.

Yeah, that'd be great. I'm not sure what 'rules' create anything as neat as your examples, but... I'd love to see that applied there and elsewhere.

[Sapphidia]

DoTs serve one main function - they allow a very high potency attack to be placed within a rotation, but because the damage happens over a period you're discouraged from spamming it.

I never saw Goring Blade as "maintain this DoT", I actually saw the visual indicator of the DoT on the target as being a kind of anchor point as to where I was in my rotation. Wasnt needed, and Goring Blade could as well have been a 600 potency attack on a 25 second cooldown and it would serve the same purpose within the rotation, but DoTs are just a nice way of doing that.

Also DoTs have the somewhat interesting gameplay choice when multiple targets are involved or adds join fights at certain points, and you have to mentally calculate whether its worth applying the dot or if the target will die too soon. Not exactly complicated, but little mini choices like that all add up to make a job interesting.

I'm not married to the idea that a paladin needs a dot, I'm just a bit concerned that they run the risk of making the rotation feel a bit TOO over simplified. I don't like the current paladin rotation - I mained Paladin until Endwalker but then swapped to Warrior as a main, so I'm keen to see if Paladin's changes make it more fun and make me swap back. But whilst I understand that a lot of players just don't like the idea of DoTs, I saw Goring Blade as a fun skill that served multiple purposes and gave an interesting set of choices and feel to the job that just a single big instant hit would not have.

It's the subtle nuances and micro choices that make a class involving, however small - look at SAM and how the removal of one single skill turned the kenki management from something that required a small bit of thought but was easy, into something that is totally mindless and spammy. I don't know if Paladin NEEDS the dot, but I hope they replace it with a more interesting ability than just a Single Big Hit.

[Lyth]

DoTs can be a lot of fun, but you definitely don't need one on every job. I'm sure that there are plenty of people who don't particularly miss the scintillating gameplay of Fracture. There are also plenty of other maintenance effects in game that play out similarly.

The real question to ask is what does the maintenance effect do for your gameplay? If you take Death's Design for example, it's functionally no different from all the single target 'DoT' effects that we've seen through the ages. But the debuff timer actually ends up being a critically important part of your burst setup. If it's just a mandatory button press every 30 seconds for the sake of 'having a DoT', that's neither interesting nor challenging, and I'd rather the hotbar space be used in more innovative ways.

[Shurrikhan]

The real question to ask is what does the maintenance effect do for your gameplay? If you take Death's Design for example, it's functionally no different from all the single target 'DoT' effects that we've seen through the ages.

Kind of, but... at that point all buffs would be "functionally" DoTs.

Because Death's Design prefers its AoE form at just two targets or more, it doesn't really grant any cleave-related gameplay, though, and because it stacks up to twice its application duration, as per Warrior's Surging Tempest or Ninja's Huton (despite also being applied via a non-combo-breaking lone GCD), it doesn't significantly anchor rotation or generate any new noticeable choices or opportunity costs.

If it's just a mandatory button press every 30 seconds for the sake of 'having a DoT', that's neither interesting nor challenging, and I'd rather the hotbar space be used in more innovative ways.

Agreed.

DoTs ought to offer new decision-making. Warrior's Fracture, for instance, had that, but in a worst of ways (only worth using in rare conditions), while Monk's Fracture could use it also to enter different rotations, modulate (could speed up rotational matching by any number of GCDs, thanks to Fracture and Touch of Death) to sync macrorotation, or as a soft-CD by which to ignore positionals -- altogether an incredible amount of utility for such a seemingly simply tool because of having enough surrounding tools and purposes.

[Lyth]

Well no. Death's Design is critical to RPR's rotation. Enshroud has a 15 second recast and Arcane Circle only lasts for 20 seconds. To get a second Enshroud off under Arcane Circle, it has to be activated 5 seconds earlier (i.e. about 2 GCDs). Those 'dummy GCDs' have to come from either Shadow of Death or Harvest Moon. To get two dummy GCDs out of Shadow of Death without overcapping on Death's Design, you need to have about 9 seconds left on Death's Design when you enter your two minute burst phase. This means that you have to deliberately let the timer tick down in preparation for your burst. If you took that setup away, the debuff is just fluff.

In AoE, Death's Design has the added feature that it gives you gauge on mob death, which is a neat effect in itself.

I think that it's relatively easy for the dev team to come out and say 'behold, a 30 second GCD-based DoT' on every job. Part of the playerbase would struggle with it, but I think a sizeable portion of raiding players would manage it as automatically as breathing. The interesting part comes out of the interaction with other actions. Can I refresh all my DoTs with a single action (Iron Jaws)? Can I spread them to another target (Bane)? Can I freeze the timers on them? Can I consume them for burst? I think if you can't answer the question around 'why is this mechanic here on this job?' then you're better off without it.