Anyone else think caster has suffered this expansion? (hopes for the future)

[Turtledeluxe]

1. What does it mean to 'understand a class/job'? AKA, what level of understanding of a class/job does it require for your performance to be deemed acceptable enough that you have grasped the basics of the class/job.

2. If you want it to be complex in maximising DPS, how much of a DPS disparity between basic understanding and max performance should there be? Are we talking about a small one or a relatively large one?

As a side note, even if you explain jobs, how they work and everything ingame, there is no guarantee that people will read them, let alone take the time to understand them. Hall of the Novice exists and people ignore it completely, despite there even being rewards for completing it, with a nice ring at the end as well.

For my last questions. Can you provide examples of where older expansions got it right? What jobs back then got it right? What is it about job design back then that you prefer?

Not aimed at me but I'm just curious on some things. 1. From the feedback I've observed, several jobs simply don't require much understanding anymore, or is that incorrect? Is the fact job simplification has occurred in some sort of dispute or are you just of the opinion that it has and doesn't matter? If jobs have been simplified then have they been simplified equally in your opinion? Had to edit because it appears there is a SAM thread asking for their job to be reverted back with many comments noting it may impact DPS. They want meaningful gameplay. Any thoughts on that? There's an entire thread about job simplification full of examples of players complaining about reduced job complexity. Any thoughts on that? 2. There's already disparity between a top percentile player vs a non top percentile player (within a particular class). What I see happening in the game, and what I see some players demanding more over time, is the closing in of DPS between all the classes because certain players (hmm) correlate their contribution to *any content* being their DPS (regardless of their class). Is this incorrect? If it is correct, do jobs need more than DPS to differentiate them and do you feel that is currently being prioritized?

[Ggwppino]

1. What does it mean to 'understand a class/job'? AKA, what level of understanding of a class/job does it require for your performance to be deemed acceptable enough that you have grasped the basics of the class/job.

2. If you want it to be complex in maximising DPS, how much of a DPS disparity between basic understanding and max performance should there be? Are we talking about a small one or a relatively large one?

For my last questions. Can you provide examples of where older expansions got it right? What jobs back then got it right? What is it about job design back then that you prefer?

1. Understanding a class means understanding the mechanism of the class. Understanding a class means understanding what the potential of each individual skill is (not to exploit it to the maximum and therefore to optimize it). The easier it is to understand, the more accessible it is to anyone. The more it is explained and pedantically requested during the progression, the more the player assimilates the notions and understands the importance and when to use these skills. Understanding a class is making an instant association between what you want to do and the skill you want to use. I wouldn't consider it a performance issue. The player knows what he's doing, maybe over time he realizes he can do better, but he knows what he's doing.

2. Once you understand a class you start optimizing and weaving the skills you've learned. When you start working you first learn your job and how to use the tools you have available, and then over time you optimize your work process becoming more and more efficient. the same thing should be here, but with designers so toxic quest for accessibility, they are depriving this to players, of lobotomized or in the process of being lobotomized jobs. By depriving players of the gratification of following a process of optimizing their job. The dps variance from knowing how to play to heavily optimizing your rotation should be fair. It's a quantity that pushes the player to want to optimize, it's the prize, but in the end it's only a purely personal matter. Not for nothing, high-level content does require a certain level of optimization, but it doesn't require extreme optimization.

Well the blm is one of the jobs that has been gradually simplified, but still today it offers a considerable degree of optimization. But let's think of the mch of HW and that of shB/EW, let's think of the smn of sB and that of EW, sam or mnk (The positional class had all their positionals taken away from them. However, it has a certain degree of optimization, for heaven's sake, but it's not the same as the previous expansions.). These are the most striking examples. The dnc was the dps class that was introduced in shB and heralded the new route that all future dps new classes or reworks would have. Get the smn. It's a class radio-controlled by yoshi-p. You don't play it, it does everything itself. The degree of optimization is almost non-existent and completely irrelevant.

[Mikey_R]

1. Understanding a class means understanding the mechanism of the class. Understanding a class means understanding what the potential of each individual skill is (not to exploit it to the maximum and therefore to optimize it). The easier it is to understand, the more accessible it is to anyone. The more it is explained and pedantically requested during the progression, the more the player assimilates the notions and understands the importance and when to use these skills. Understanding a class is making an instant association between what you want to do and the skill you want to use. I wouldn't consider it a performance issue. The player knows what he's doing, maybe over time he realizes he can do better, but he knows what he's doing.

2. Once you understand a class you start optimizing and weaving the skills you've learned. When you start working you first learn your job and how to use the tools you have available, and then over time you optimize your work process becoming more and more efficient. the same thing should be here, but with designers so toxic quest for accessibility, they are depriving this to players, of lobotomized or in the process of being lobotomized jobs. By depriving players of the gratification of following a process of optimizing their job. The dps variance from knowing how to play to heavily optimizing your rotation should be fair. It's a quantity that pushes the player to want to optimize, it's the prize, but in the end it's only a purely personal matter. Not for nothing, high-level content does require a certain level of optimization, but it doesn't require extreme optimization.

Well the blm is one of the jobs that has been gradually simplified, but still today it offers a considerable degree of optimization. But let's think of the mch of HW and that of shB/EW, let's think of the smn of sB and that of EW, sam or mnk (The positional class had all their positionals taken away from them. However, it has a certain degree of optimization, for heaven's sake, but it's not the same as the previous expansions.). These are the most striking examples. The dnc was the dps class that was introduced in shB and heralded the new route that all future dps new classes or reworks would have. Get the smn. It's a class radio-controlled by yoshi-p. You don't play it, it does everything itself. The degree of optimization is almost non-existent and completely irrelevant.

1. You say it isn't a performance issue, however, knowing your job better leads to better performance, you cannot escape the link that they share. You also used a lot of words to say...not a lot. You say they should understand the potential of each skill, but not necessarily optimise it. This can translate to someone understanding that the combo should go 123, but they do 321. I would say this is a case where someone does not understand the basics of the job. However, the other issue is, how are you meant to know the potential of each skill? Not everyone is going to sit down and calculate the best use for each skill. You say you can explain these during job quests or some other medium ingame, however, you have no guarantee that someone is going to read them, let alone understand them (this also ignores any reworks that changes a skill, you cannot expect people to go back and re-read them). What you have said is so vague, it tells me nothing.

If you want a baseline I expect, keeping your GCD rolling and making use of your main job gimmick. This means, Monk's using Masterful Blitzes and The forbidden Chakra, Dragoons making use of Life of the Dragon, Samurais Iaijutsu etc. If you happen to throw out the odd buff here and there, then good for you. It might not be optimal, but it was used. This then gives a solid baseline that everything else builds up on. There is no point learning the optimal use for Riddle of Fire if you do not know how Perfect Balance and Masterful Blitzes work after all. You seem to want to start with someone knowing everything and fumbling their way through, whereas I want to build the base layer and add things ontop from there and this is exactly how I learn new jobs. Start with the base GCD rotation add things that affect a buff/debuff or messes with a gauge and end it with the buffs. I start at the beginning and work my way up rather than jumping in the deep end. This is what I was trying to imply when I asked the question of 'understanding'.

2. You didn't answer my question at all with the closest you got was, 'fair', whatever that means. What is deemed fair? How much extra benefit am I going to have by taking the time to learn how to play optimally as opposed to just doing whatever I want? 10%, 25%, 50% higher?

3. You, again, didn't answer my question. I have to wonder whether you done this on purpose at this point. However, I was asking about specific examples. Everyone has different views on what was simplifying, what was a QoL change etc., that I wanted to know what your mentality was on the subject. Going through the list:

BLM, how was it simplified? Is it the fact that you had to work to keep up Enochian? Back in HW, Blizzard 4 refreshed the timer, but reduced the max by some amount I don't remember, meaning you had to refresh it by using Enochian, which came off cooldown just as it was needed. This was changed, I believe in SB, where, as long as you had AF or UI active, Enochian would never drop. Was this a simplification? I would call it a QoL as, since you are no longer tied to the timer of Enochian, you don't have to worry about it potentially running out with al the procs you might have, which includes Foul. This was then changed in EW where Enochian is no longer a skill, it is just active. However, the probably removed it to free up a slot for something else, so, would you rather have Enochian or Amplifier?

What about HW Machinist? Between it and Bard, it was the better use of the cast bar, Wildfire's really weren't that hard to optimise, as much as people didn't seem to think so but most of your time was spent using Split Shot trying to get procs with nothing in between. Fun. So, what was good about it?

Summoner, I thought it was just getting jankier and jankier as the expansions went along so when EW reworked it, I was personally happy. Yes, it could do with more, but at least the job feels like it is coherent. I suspect you feel differently. Also, there is a small amount of optimisation on Summoner, mainly where so you place your Ifrit phase as it is so limiting, so, to say it has no optimisations is disingenuous, even if it is a small one.

I assume the SAM comment is in regards to Kaiten. No reason it should have gone, however, that is a small thing compared to the job as a whole, which I don't believe has changed much.

Monk, EW bought Monk something it needed. For 2 expansions, it got shafted with crap all in an attempt to try and keep GL. I would say making GL a trait was a welcome change as it means we can now new toys that aren't just a GL saver. Positionals should have stayed though, yes.

I have said all that about all the jobs, but I have no idea if any of it is what you meant. None of these are meant to be trick questions. They aren't meant to try and catch you out. They are for me to try and understand your way of thinking about these issues. My level of understanding a job is going to be different to yours, what I consider a QoL change is going to be your simplification. All I am asking for is clarification, that is it.

Not aimed at me but I'm just curious on some things. 1. From the feedback I've observed, several jobs simply don't require much understanding anymore, or is that incorrect? Is the fact job simplification has occurred in some sort of dispute or are you just of the opinion that it has and doesn't matter? If jobs have been simplified then have they been simplified equally in your opinion? Had to edit because it appears there is a SAM thread asking for their job to be reverted back with many comments noting it may impact DPS. They want meaningful gameplay. Any thoughts on that? There's an entire thread about job simplification full of examples of players complaining about reduced job complexity. Any thoughts on that? 2. There's already disparity between a top percentile player vs a non top percentile player (within a particular class). What I see happening in the game, and what I see some players demanding more over time, is the closing in of DPS between all the classes because certain players (hmm) correlate their contribution to *any content* being their DPS (regardless of their class). Is this incorrect? If it is correct, do jobs need more than DPS to differentiate them and do you feel that is currently being prioritized?

1. To understand the basics of a job, no, they do not require much understanding. However, as stated above, what a player deems as understanding a job is going to be different for different people.
2. Job simplification has happened to some extent, you cannot ignore Summoner after all and no, jobs have not been 'simplified' equally.
3. Don't play SAM to a point where I have an opinion either way. It isn't a job I care about, so I tend to stay out of the discussion.
4. As I tend to ask when these things come up. What does it mean to have 'complexity', what does it mean for a job to be 'simplified', what does it mean for a job to have 'depth', what defines whether a change is a QoL feature or something else (normally simplification).
5. It has taken a while, But I think I understand what you are asking. To put it plainly, the only reason to bring a specific job is because of their damage output. I'm going to refrain from answering whether or not your statement is correct or incorrect, as I struggled to keep track of what exactly was asked, however, I will comment on job damage in general and that should give you an idea of what my stance is.

Starting from the beginning. The goal is to have every job be able to complete all content. That is the absolute baseline. This means, if a fight is designed with a specific tool in mind that is required, it means every job has to have that tool. Look at knockback prevention. Between Arm's Length and Surecast, every job has a way to prevent knockback. Now, imagine, if say, melee did not have access to this at all. It does mean you cannot design mechanics where you kill a player for not using the Knockback prevention, or give some sort of punishment, however, it isn't an issue as all melees will be treated the same. However, if you were to suddenly give it to 1-2 jobs, suddenly, that knockback prevention has become a massive advantage, which can lead to those 2 jobs being picked over the others, just because they have the tools for the fight. This is why every job has a knockback prevention. This is why tanks have similar defensive kits (you need to be able to mitigate damage effectively after all, go back to 2.0 Warrior for an example where it doesn't work) and healers need to have some minimum healing output. If they don't, they don't join the fight, which contradicts the very goal the set out to do.

This leaves just one metric that every job is focused around, their damage output. This is the reason why people are so focused on it as it is the only thing that differentiates one job from another. Sure, you can point to Verraise and Resurrection, but you only use them when things have gone wrong and ideally after the healers. Are there some instances where Vercure is useful? Probably, but it shouldn't get to that point to begin with. However, because DPS is the only thing that matters, it means people scrutinise it more than they probably should. As of making this post, using FFlogs over all of Savage, there is currently a little under 8% difference between the top job (reaper) and the bottom job (Dancer) based on rDPS (this is upper quartile numbers and I will use these unless stated otherwise). This is not alot, especially when you consider the difference between upper quartile and lower quartile for Reaper is closer to 10% (again, based on rDPS). The difference between BLM and RDM is ~3%, the difference between SMN and RDM is <1%. Currently, I would say every job is viable. Even in TOP, the disparity between the top and bottom is <6%, this is despite the fact ultimate fights tend to favour certain jobs over others just because of the nature of the encounters (long downtime phases).

There is nothing wrong with the job balance in terms of damage output. However, since it is the only criticism people can make of the balance, it is what they hyper focus on. They are just picking at the small things because there is nothing big to pick at. I hope that answers your question.

[Ggwppino]

You say it isn't a performance issue, however, knowing your job better leads to better performance, you cannot escape the link that they share.

Knowing a job means you're not hitting buttons at random. You want to do X and then immediately hit that button. Of course, if you already know how the class works and you immediately associate action-skill, you perform better, but this does not mean that you perform at your best. Knowing a class means knowing what you're doing, it doesn't mean knowing how to optimize it to the max

This can translate to someone understanding that the combo should go 123, but they do 321. I would say this is a case where someone does not understand the basics of the job.

This means you have never played the old smn or blm. But you've only played melee where the combos are enlightened and consequential. It's okay, no problem. You knew the old smn had two dots and the aim was to keep them active constantly, with the old smn you knew you had to use tri-disaster and its reset timer and with the old smn you knew you had to use your ruin 4 stack. Not here we're talking about 123 or 321, here we're talking about keeping these things in mind and squeezing them to the max to get more damage, there's no 123 and 321 combo. With the same blm you know you have to have mana to do damage but stay as little time as possible in the ice phase, keep your dot up and have movement when needed, take advantage of paradox, transpose, procs, triplecast. Having said that, then there are standard openers that the community has intelligently come to dictate but here it is because there was a study behind it and in fact this is all optimization. The optimization in melee was to keep as much uptime as possible, keep personal buffs up, position well to take advantage of more damage from positionals.

Also, there is a small amount of optimisation on Summoner, mainly where so you place your Ifrit phase as it is so limiting, so, to say it has no optimisations is disingenuous, even if it is a small one.

In fact I wrote "The degree of optimization is almost non-existent and completely irrelevant".
The current smn has the optimization of dropping splipstream under buff or under pot but doing it or not doing it changes practically nothing and using ifrit in downtime (but ifrit only lasts 13 seconds and casts only last 6 seconds).
Is there optimization? yes, is that enough? Just compare it to the predecessor or all classes that have had minimal reworks during the expansions.

You didn't answer my question at all with the closest you got was, 'fair', whatever that means. What is deemed fair? How much extra benefit am I going to have by taking the time to learn how to play optimally as opposed to just doing whatever I want? 10%, 25%, 50% higher?

Fair is the right term. 10%,20%,30%,50% would be just an invented number written just for its sake. Because the damage is an output that must take into consideration many factors including optimization. There must be? Clearly. The player who plays needs to be rewarded when there is effort. Is this prize actually worthwhile? in part: high-level content should be calibrated considering that people have reached a certain degree of optimization (therefore damage output), clearly high-level content, if not extreme content, cannot expect that there is a extreme degree of optimization, because few people are willing to achieve perfection.

Summoner, I thought it was just getting jankier and jankier as the expansions went along so when EW reworked it, I was personally happy.

Me too. The old smn had some factual issues especially for the carbuncle AI and queue system. Then I played the new class for 2 days and it didn't give me anything back because it didn't require anything from me.

Monk, EW bought Monk something it needed. For 2 expansions, it got shafted with crap all in an attempt to try and keep GL. I would say making GL a trait was a welcome change as it means we can now new toys that aren't just a GL saver. Positionals should have stayed though, yes.

Yes I agree, in shB they didn't know what to do with the mnk and with each patch they kept modifying it. But was there really a need to strip him of his positionals? What is their excuse?

[Turtledeluxe]

2. Job simplification has happened to some extent, you cannot ignore Summoner after all and no, jobs have not been 'simplified' equally.

4. As I tend to ask when these things come up. What does it mean to have 'complexity', what does it mean for a job to be 'simplified', what does it mean for a job to have 'depth', what defines whether a change is a QoL feature or something else (normally simplification).
5. Starting from the beginning. The goal is to have every job be able to complete all content. That is the absolute baseline.

I feel like defining what it means to have complexity is redundant because to your point, it's different for everyone and these definitions are littered across the forum in various topics. My question about job simplification was rhetorical because there is no debate jobs have been simplified. Yes in some ways redundancy has been reduced-- job simplification isn't always a bad thing. But when players are complaining that their former rotations are reduced to mostly a button spam, that's an example of job simplification gone wrong. And the only reason I bring it up is because the more it occurs, the more it will popularize particular classes and create imbalance. Damage output may be fine in the Savage fight but participation is quite skewed in high end content in general from what I've seen. You attribute this to the fight design and while I agree on this, I feel it's far more nuanced than that. You're heavily discounting that players in general choose a class that appeals to them subjectively (it's fun, it looks cool, i like to heal in most games) and has a healthy balance of damage and mobility. People don't want to play RDM because although they may like the mobility, the look, the skills, the damage isn't good enough. In this sense the jobs are not balanced imo.

Also keep in mind FFlogs for Savage and Ultimate are only one form of content. There's also a lot of people playing casual content, in fact for the game to thrive that is quite necessary....and right now it does not feel balanced to me.

[Mikey_R]

Knowing a job means you're not hitting buttons at random. You want to do X and then immediately hit that button. Of course, if you already know how the class works and you immediately associate action-skill, you perform better, but this does not mean that you perform at your best. Knowing a class means knowing what you're doing, it doesn't mean knowing how to optimize it to the max

Again, the vague statement of, 'knowing what you are doing' doesn't help. What level of knowing is required. Knowing you have to hit the boss with things is knowing what you are doing, but it doesn't mean you know how to play your job. This is where my example of someone not doing a basic combo right came into it. Technically, doing 321 is knowing what you are doing (hitting the boss), but noone is going to call that someone knowing what they are doing. So there is a minimum level that is acceptable, this is different between different people. I already stated my point, I'm just trying to pry out something a bit more concrete than 'know what you are doing'.

In fact I wrote "The degree of optimization is almost non-existent and completely irrelevant".

That is on me, missed that one.

Fair is the right term.

But what is fair? This is the same question I ask whenever someone brings up complexity, or depth or any other vague term. You have to have some idea about a rough range that would be deemed acceptable. Of course, it is going to fluctuate, but there must be some range you are aiming for. What is the reward for learning the job.

And again I asked for specifics about older expansions and what made them fun to learn, or what they did right, and you have once again failed to provide any sort of response. I can only assume, therefore, that you have nothing to provide. If you do want to comment on it, you don't even need to make a comprehensive list, just a few specific examples so that I can know where your thinking lies.

Also keep in mind FFlogs for Savage and Ultimate are only one form of content. There's also a lot of people playing casual content, in fact for the game to thrive that is quite necessary....and right now it does not feel balanced to me.

people only care about numbers when the numbers matter, ie. Savage, Ultimate and, to a lesser extent Extremes. Noone really cares about how well a job does under dungeon conditions, or normal trials for that matter. Alot of this comes down to the fact you have a much wider spread of player skill and so, someone not using your raid buff optimally, or that other person has delayed the second usage by 30 second for some unknown reason.

If we take a slight detour towards fighting games. Which audience are you going to balance the characters around? The top players who know what they are doing, or the casual ones who do not care about the balance and just want to have fun. It is the same here. The balance is based on the top players and not the random player just playing to have fun and not necessarily aiming to optimise.

If you want some numbers, which might make things a bit clearer. TOP, (based on rDPS) Reaper is 11503, Machinist is 10884. That is highest DPS and lowest DPS. 619 dps difference or reaper is doing 5.6% rDPS more than MCH. Savage, Reaper 10615, Dancer, 9832. 783 rDPS difference or a 8.0% increase. I could break it down between the roles, but the differences will be even smaller.

So tell me, how do the jobs not feel balanced?

[Lyth]

Everyone wants to do more damage, because it gets you clears, and is used as an indirect metric of your skill as a player.

When you ask for a job to unilaterally do more damage than all the others based on the anecdotal claim that it is 'more difficult to play than the others', it's well worth remembering that you're also implying that the job in question is too difficult for you. When sufficiently many people point out the difficulty of a job, then it gets simplified. We've already seen several examples this very expansion.

[Turtledeluxe]

[QUOTE=Mikey_R;6230331.

So tell me, how do the jobs not feel balanced?[/QUOTE]

Because in the quest to make it easy for raiders to do damage, the rest of the content has not been adjusted so mainly all I need to clear a dungeon or even a raid is a tank, perhaps a healer if you want to speed things up. To your point everyone is basically a DPS and casual content is a zerg basically. Some of this is due to fight design and player experience, but as I keep saying I also think part of it is that jons havr been made easier, higher damage, more defensive options etc.

[Turtledeluxe]

Everyone wants to do more damage, because it gets you clears, and is used as an indirect metric of your skill as a player.

When you ask for a job to unilaterally do more damage than all the others based on the anecdotal claim that it is 'more difficult to play than the others', it's well worth remembering that you're also implying that the job in question is too difficult for you. When sufficiently many people point out the difficulty of a job, then it gets simplified. We've already seen several examples this very expansion.

From what I've been told by others, devs have made public statements regarding their approach to job difficulty and how it correlates to that job's DPS, so by extension it's not anecdotal in nature. I'm not sure who is calling for unilaterally higher DPS but whenever I see posts like this I can't help but think they're projection. Having thoughts about job balance doesn't automatically mean someone is bad at the game or that they want high DPS just because or some gripe with Ultimates. Making claims like this without any evidence is unnecessary and irrelevant to the subject. If you're saying a class is easier to play and that their difficulty is a myth, just say that and explain your position.

[Lyth]

Offhand, the only official reference that I can think about balancing job DPS against 'job difficulty' is the following: Link

'When balancing jobs, each job's base damage numbers at the applicable item level are adjusted with respect to the difficulty of playing that particular job and its rotation, as well as its support actions and their effects.'

It just sounds like a blanket statement to cover why there are differences in damage between the subroles, without actually elaborating on specifics of why. It's worth remembering that exact same official statement also implied that melee dps is intrinsically 'more difficult' than casters which are intrinsically 'more difficult' than physical ranged. This is a stance that I personally disagree with because of how subjective 'difficulty' is. I'd rather just give everyone rDPS parity and level the playing field, and I encourage you to seek equality on those terms. But if you want to argue that you should be doing more damage than everyone else because you feel that you're playing a 'very difficult' job, then please don't be surprised or upset at the ensuing rework.