FFXIV Job Design Feedback

[AwesomeJr44]

Tanks
PLD - Increase it's overall damage so it doesn't feel so weak.
WAR - Remove Holmgang's bind effect and just make it a buff. With the way it currently works, if you're out of range (only 6y), Holmgang will just not work unless you deselect the boss (or make a macro, but it's stupid for that to be required). In addition, Holmgang's bind is already very niche. There is near zero downside to just removing the bind and having Holmgang work at any range, like the other invulns do.
DRK - Make TBN not cost MP, and make Dark Mind function like Addle where it still gives a lot of magic mitigation but also a small amount of physical mitigation, making it less useless in fights that use a lot of physical attacks.
GNB - Increase No Mercy's duration to 25s, and make it easier to use mitigations during your burst.

Melee
SAM - Find a way to remove the filler from the rotation.
MNK - I barely play this job so no idea what to do
DRG - Merge High Jump and Mirage Dive again.
RPR - This is fine.
NIN - Fix the mudra clipping, and make Hyoton have an actual use outside of Kassatsu. (no, a bind effect that most bosses are immune to is not an actual use)

Ranged
BRD - Bring back DoT based procs, and make the songs last 40s so you don't have to cut them short.
MCH - This is fine as is.
DNC - This is also fine as is.

Caster
BLM - I barely ever play this job
SMN - This job's fine where it is.
RDM - I wanna see more buff/support options. Make RDM feel more like a support caster than a caster with a few support options.

Healer
In General - They need more offensive options
WHM - I'm fairly happy with this job rn.
AST - Literally just revert AST's card and seal system to Shadowbringers AST and I'm happy. The EW rework kinda killed that system. While some people prefer HW or SB AST's cards, I think SHB was when the system was at its best. The removal of the two sects was an alright change though.
SCH - No clue what to do.
SGE - I wish there were more unique interactions with Kardia. Perhaps there could be a damage spell that applies a shield to the person with Kardia. As it is, it feels like a glorified Regen effect.

[dspguy]

In a lost post from a few months ago, I laid out how all the tanks are about the same. I provided an example of how if a player were to layout their hotbars for all 4 tanks in a certain way, they could do "tank roulette" and play any tank competently since the jobs are so alike. Sure, to get that last 5% maybe you need to be an expert. For the vast majority of the population, tanks are nearly the same except with a reskinned weapon.

In many ways they are balanced, but in others... homogenous.

This doesn't deter me from playing the game, but does make me a little less excited when they add a new job, such as GNB. Arrange the hotbar to be like the other 3 tanks, and you are golden.

[SomeGuy22]

1. Really dislike it. A neat, near universal 2-min burst window may be easier to make content around but it'll also make gameplay dull in the long run. Heavy homogenization to counteract balance issues is like if you stop shooting yourself in the left foot to start shooting yourself in the right foot instead.

2. I quite liked Stormblood's (I may be biased, since it's the one I started with). Didn't much care for TP by itself and I don't mind different debuff types being gone, but I liked that you had to have team synergy in mind and you also had to be more aware of your teammates (for stuff like MP/TP regen and such).

3. Official surveys would be great to have, but without rewards. I feel that people who want to provide feedback, be it positive or negative, will fill a survey of their own volition whether they have an incentive to or not. Some people'll always give unhelpful answers for shits and giggles too, and tying a shiny to the surveys would 100% increase their number.

[Shinkuno]

What people forget is: they made everything same-y and fit into the 2min meta, yet content comes out with the bottom dps classes not able to clear week 1. If they cant get balance right with homogenization, what good does it do except boring the shit out of people? If MCH fails to clear savage week 1 anyway, at least make the classes interesting.

[ty_taurus]

Noticed there was an issue with the warrior form. The link should work now.

[Semirhage]

1. How do you feel about the general state of job design in Endwalker in contrast to past expansions? Do you think this direction is good or bad for the game long term?

I've spoken at varying length about this in the Healer subforum, but here's a good place for general direction. The writing has been on the wall for several years now when it comes to overall job design: the direction is clearly pruning, simplification, and removal of skill expression. Job design changes are, almost without exception, made to reduce player interactivity as much as possible. I don't mean this puts players on autopilot- what I mean is, the effect of player choice on their success is more muted. With each change, the correct decision at any fork in the road becomes more in-your-face, and the punishment for failing to take that path gets less severe.

RDM's mana gain per cast was reduced, but the gap between black and white mana before your gauge becomes unbalanced remained the same (reduced punishment).
Enchanted Reprise went from being a situational potency gain to a potency loss (Only the main rotation is the correct choice)
Boss hitboxes were blown up so melee don't have to disengage.
Tanks get ever more defense, ever more sustain, ever more immortality.
Casters get more and more mobility tools
Healers get ever more redundant free, instant healing abilities with gigantic potencies while their downtime gets as childproof as I've ever seen a healer in any MMO.


Will this design direction lead to more subs and money for Square? Probably. Lots of people with money are easily entertained by shallow class design.
Will this design direction piss off veterans? A chunk of us, yes. Square very clearly doesn't give a crap about that though unless the backlash is loud, embarrassing, and public.
Will a portion of this playerbase keep insisting "but pressing 111111111 over and over again Is sO FuN" instead of finding a visual novel? Oh god yes. They've never stopped and I don't expect them to.

[RitsukoSonoda]

IMO I'd say Job design in FFXIV is another in a long list of victims caused by the removal of staple RPG mechanics and oversimplification of gameplay that was labeled as "accessibility". This lead to jobs losing their individuality over time to homogenization by role as every job within a role needed to perform the same all the time due to there being no variance on enemies or combat situations.

[Knot_D]

Stormblood IMO was the golden age for Healers, SCH and AST were the peak design while WHM still ehh... better than HW.

[Striker44]

1.) In general, I like the current state of job design where it's at right now for this particular point in time. Would I have liked it 10 in this format 10 years ago? Probably not. Would I have liked the format from 10 years ago today? Also probably not. With limited playtime and a few different games I go between, the current generally homogeneous nature of the classes within each role coupled with a select few abilities that distinguish them works very well for me to try out a variety of different classes. The only part of the current design I wish they would get away from is the infamous "2-minute meta".

2.) This is also a complicated question. I think it's important to consider the time period for each expansion alongside the job design. Similar to #1, I think they've done a good job of adjusting job design to match the reality of their playerbase. For example, back in the early days of WoW, I was in college and had plenty of time (along with most of the playerbase, which was mainly teenagers, college kids, and recent grads). I had no problem with sitting around in a town spamming the chat to find a dungeon group, then traveling to the dungeon, and it being an hour-long affair. Today? Not a chance. It's the same human beings who are the main playerbase, but we're now approaching middle age, with families and full-time careers. What was "awesome" back then wouldn't be today. My take on class design is similar. Job design in each expansion has kept up with the reality of the times and the primary playerbase.

3.) No interest or opinion on this one.

[Lyth]

You don't need to incentivize feedback. If you're investing time into playing this game on a regular basis, it's always to your advantage to provide feedback. There's reams of it on this forum. The difficulty is in separating player feedback that is genuinely beneficial to the state of the game out from requests designed to selectively grant a competitive edge to one subset of players over the rest. Who isn't going to ask for more damage for less effort?

There's too much focus both within the community and by the developers around how target dummy rotations are designed and not enough focus on the intersection between rotation design and fight mechanics. You spend countless hours in raid content across any expansion hammering out your base rotation. That's just muscle memory. What makes it interesting is the little tricks you use to maintain uptime. Can you negate the damage from a mechanic or take advantage of a movement ability to squeeze extra GCDs in?

You need a toolkit that allows players to come up with creative solutions, but you also need fights that give them opportunities to actually showcase them. Actions like Ingress/Egress and Shukuchi have a lot of interesting possibilities in a movement heavy fight. But if the boss hitbox fills the arena, they become a lot less interesting.

As far as tanks and healers go, the primary issue is that these roles are progressively deemphasized and devalued, but that's a design decision that dates back to Stormblood. If you don't want players to be reliant on their tanks and healers, then the players who are drawn to those roles aren't going to want to play them. But that's likely a consequence of the game itself trying to evolve away from a trinity model.