What if they added sub-jobs to ff14

[True-to-Caesar]

DPS Coombreaker ?
Count me in

I'd rather have talents, or if possible multiple sub specializations like WoW with adjustable talents for each.

The problem is that Blizzard does it so badly that yet again, many talents are downright useless and skipped.
I was playing a few days ago and on my warrior there was the possibility to play with one handed weapons instead of dual-wielding 2handed ones.

Guess what ?
Blizzard itself came out literally saying that choosing this talent for content is not a good idea as it’s specifically designed to have less damage ~ -20% (or more) and that if you want to do harder content you have to play the way the devs WANT. There’s no choice there.

It’s the same for many other talents. Fail Wars 2 has that issue too. In many games the devs don’t give a shit to balance properly.

Here yes you don’t have talents but it’s to reduce the possibilities and give developers a higher chance to bring everyone to the same level. And there’s still some issues here and there but not as bad.

If they can however allow some jobs to have DPS, Tank, Heal subspec that would be nice to be perfectly honest.
No idea how they’d make it work gear-wise however. Maybe a passive that converts stats to whatever is relevant.

[Shurrikhan]

I'd rather have talents, or if possible multiple sub specializations like WoW with adjustable talents for each.

This seems about the least efficient way to provide a sense of meaningful choice. It creates exponentially harder balancing, all for the least palpable impact on the breadth of aesthetic and playstyle choice provided for the effort spent even on initial ideation, let alone actual balancing.

Sub-jobs, perhaps a few integral traits, and/or allowing every job to mix-and-match different primary attributes (a MND-heavy MNK being a half-Healer, for instance) to serve different role purposes (rather than each just being a role template first and a job second) are about the limit for efficient outcomes from offering additional choices outside of combat itself (e.g., in gravitating towards one playflow choice or end of a gamble over another, by habit, even if there may technically be a best answer that'd generate up to a couple percent more throughput).

[Aurikai]

It creates exponentially harder balancing, all for the least palpable impact on the breadth of aesthetic and playstyle choice provided for the effort spent even on initial ideation, let alone actual balancing.

Exponentially? Do you know what that means? There's a 7 point difference in scores between a MUCH larger amount of specs/classes in WoW, and ranged are actually near the top.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/31

Same 7 point difference in FFXIV, except the top is all ruled by melee.
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/49

So literally there's no major "exponential" gap between specs. It's just laziness on SE part not offer us more choices.

[Aurikai]

Here yes you don’t have talents but it’s to reduce the possibilities and give developers a higher chance to bring everyone to the same level.

Except everyone is not on the same level, there's a ranged DPS tax that doesn't exist in other games, but for some reason does here?

https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/49

[Shurrikhan]

Exponentially? Do you know what that means? There's a 7 point difference in scores between a MUCH larger amount of specs/classes in WoW, and ranged are actually near the top.
https://www.warcraftlogs.com/zone/statistics/31

Same 7 point difference in FFXIV, except the top is all ruled by melee.
https://www.fflogs.com/zone/statistics/49

So literally there's no major "exponential" gap between specs. It's just laziness on SE part not offer us more choices.

I didn't say it couldn't be done, but you end up with each talent being balanced on the basis of many other talents, which are each balanced on other talents balanced on other talents, etc., in turn.

The efforts required to reach that balance is greatly increased, and each component has to be constrained by the other, often forcing the apparently myriad options into, in reality, only a handful of bundles.

All that, for the least noticeable differences possible in playable experiences.


Again, I'm all for more customization. I just find a talent tree system like WoW's about the absolute least efficient way to provide that, especially outside of a game built from the bottom-up for one (think Rift, for instance, more so than WoW, where they've had enough work thrown at them not to feel too half-assed... but still run into inherent issues on jobs that don't well or cleanly blend nor divy up their thematic potential across roles [see Hunter, Death Knight, Priest, for instance]).

[Shurrikhan]

On the other hand...

Guess what ?
Blizzard itself came out literally saying that choosing this talent for content is not a good idea as it’s specifically designed to have less damage ~ -20% (or more) and that if you want to do harder content you have to play the way the devs WANT. There’s no choice there.

This (above) is an exaggeration. The only times we've seen large disparities as a result of a small swap in one's talent tree or a single choice on the talent grids were when tuning passes fell through or a talent was bugged.

Moreover, it's frankly a good thing that the more finnicky, difficult to optimize, or otherwise conditional talents have higher output ceilings. For a majority of players, still, the easier playstyle choices are likely to outperform those higher-ceiling-but-more-difficult talents anyways.

If both had the same ceilings, sure, now your M+ players on farm would have the option of playing whatever they want, but anyone short of a level of skill and familiarity where that difficulty increase would be irrelevant essentially then gets barred from using the more difficult builds, for fear of griefing their own team in trying to learn that which has no reward for learning.

A small selection of such choices would not be a bad idea if they could be sufficiently straightforward but impactful to one's gameplay. There's just little point in trying to support some 21 (as per WoW talent grids) to ~100 points (talent trees, between class and spec) of options each.

[True-to-Caesar]

On the other hand...



This (above) is an exaggeration. The only times we've seen large disparities as a result of a small swap in one's talent tree or a single choice on the talent grids were when tuning passes fell through or a talent was bugged.

Moreover, it's frankly a good thing that the more finnicky, difficult to optimize, or otherwise conditional talents have higher output ceilings. For a majority of players, still, the easier playstyle choices are likely to outperform those higher-ceiling-but-more-difficult talents anyways.

If both had the same ceilings, sure, now your M+ players on farm would have the option of playing whatever they want, but anyone short of a level of skill and familiarity where that difficulty increase would be irrelevant essentially then gets barred from using the more difficult builds, for fear of griefing their own team in trying to learn that which has no reward for learning.

A small selection of such choices would not be a bad idea if they could be sufficiently straightforward but impactful to one's gameplay. There's just little point in trying to support some 21 (as per WoW talent grids) to ~100 points (talent trees, between class and spec) of options each.

There’s nothing “harder” to optimize with Titan’s Grip. It costs 0 talent points to make it work since it’s baseline. Single-Minded fury is not, gets lower base damage and lower stats and they have nothing to compensate.

There is only one build for dual 1h and it’s still lower DPS than your typical TG build despite needing more points to just make it somewhat viable.
Instant kick/refused from groups if you dare show your face with SMF.

Can you explain what’s hyperbolic in that ?

[Hazama999]

I don't know about adding sub-jobs specifically, but I do wish the game had a bit more player expression on the combat side of things. That said, I do realize that with the way the game presently works, there is very little room for it.

[Shurrikhan]

There’s nothing “harder” to optimize with Titan’s Grip. It costs 0 talent points to make it work since it’s baseline.

You're picking probably the most infamous talent choice balance there is (I'm in the camp that SMF should likewise [again] be baseline), but that still doesn't get to the crux of the issue. SMF can absolutely compete with TG in ST. The problem is its interdependence on/with other talents, especially where SMF synergizes far better with flat on-AA damage procs like Annihilator and SMF thereby has to be balanced around that synergy, pigeonholing it towards single-target.


Further explanation on this talent bundling, for context/those less familiar with the class/spec used as example (click below to expand):

Especially early on, because Annihilator [a capstone talent with granting a flat bonus damage per-auto-attack] doesn't care what your weapon's attack speed is, it synergized far better with SMF [which used quicker but weaker weapons] than it did with TG [dual-wielding two-handers for stronger strikes and more stats but lower attack speed], to the point getting any sort of viability out of SMF, in balance, required that a Fury Warrior replace their main GCD (Raging Blow) with an auto-attack (Annihilator) and that they prioritize any increases to AA speed which in turn pushed them towards Dancing Blades [an AA buff] (for which they'd have to take Odyn's Fury [a short burst damage CD]) Wild Strikes [AA speed buff on crits] (which pushed them toward Thunderous Roar [a Bleed damage CD] Thunderous Words [+15% damage via all bleeds], which in turn pushed them towards any Bleed talents they could grab from Fury itself).

A huge portion of the value of Annihilator, too, especially for SMF, would also be wasted unless taking Anger Management [CD reduction to one's main buff / damage&resource CD per spender], so then you'd be building around that to the point that you could soft-cap Recklessness [said main damage&resource buff CD] uptime.

Ultimately, this meant that taking the SMF talent at all meant you were building for focus- or single-target, into a slightly dumbed down build with less burst and greater dependence on full AA uptime (and opting to be inferior in AoE despite little to no ST advantage). It also meant you were, in PvE, obliged to take...

• Wild Strikes,
• Thunderous Roar,
• Thunderous Words,
• Frenzied Flurry,
• Cold Steel Hot Blood,
• Bloodborne,
• Deft Experience,
• Storm of Swords,
• Annihilator,
• Odyn's Fury,
• Dancing Blades,
• Swift Strikes,
• Anger Management, and
• Unbridled Fury,

...and must avoid nearly an equally long list of talents... all to make that one talent actually viable. Didn't want to play an auto-attack based Fury Warrior? Wanted competitive AoE output? Too bad; you chose the version that doesn't ridiculously attempt to strike with a poleaxe in each hand as if they were pool noodles, so you're stuck also with everything that it's balanced around.

Or heck, just take Slaughtering Strikes as an example. On one hand it could break critical PvP thresholds if allowed to stack much further on TG if paired with certain PvP talents, but it can literally cause SMF to cap out its stacks and waste its throughput it'd otherwise provide; the talent breaks on one end or the other because of its dependencies.

Aside: In fact, swapping outright to daggers, a weapon not intended for Warrior, could initially outperform Warrior weapons, SMF or otherwise, because it the continuous damage and rage generation from Annihilator could guarantee full Recklessness uptime. That much is good and fun, but...

In short, the degree of talent interdependence (and therefore bundling) such that one draws only a handful at most of options affecting playstyle from among the allegedly thousands of combinations possible... makes systems like WoW's talent trees a painfully inefficient means of providing customization to how their bases feel to play.

[True-to-Caesar]

I picked that example because it was my actual experience when I came back to give the game a try again.

How can you say it can compete when if does enough lower damage that you’d get booted from high M+ keys ? Sometimes lower because they’ll see you as useless right off the bat.

And that’s only for 1 specialization only, I didn’t bother checking on my rogue or demon hunter. But reading the forums I have no doubts the talent trees are plagued with similar illusion of choice talents.

Imo if the talent tree isn’t huge and reasonably small with talents that really change how you play, I’d be ok with it.
Maybe something similar to Fail Wars 2, with a few major and minor talents to pick.