Rotations: Making them DIFFERENT

[Sparkthor]

I'm still very confused about RNG relations player seem's to have in the game :
- People want the old AST card system to came back.
- People blame crit RNG.

But here I think we can agree a aoe balance every minute is way more impactful than the crit RNG we can have. I'm really confused about all this. I'm pretty sure there is some kind of ill nostalgia about theses topics.

That's also why I didn't want to talk about the AST : to me it's core concept is a messy garbage wich lead to many targeted imput for little satisfying results : who really care about the card they draw on 30, 90 etc. s? They pop were few people as dommage to deals, so you need to keep it for the min cd, with double card, for additionnal ogcd problem.

The other mess is the past : when Sage were present, Ast got 2 stance to adapt with a WHM or a SCH, even if it's no longer the case, it kept some tools baseline created with this in place, like Collective Unconscious which, when mitigation is king, is an additionnal 10% mitigation on 60s cd on a "pure" healer.


I could go on, but we took some step out the topic.

[Sebazy]

This is why I've always pushed for ASTs to get a way to pull cards on the GCD. Allowing them to brute force them with GCDs helps mitigate bad variance and allows the player a much better shot at guaranteeing a specific card for a specific window.

Regardless, one thing to keep in mind is that AST RNG is entirely avoidable, you can just play WHM etc instead, it doesn't really cost the group much if anything anymore. Sidestepping crit RNG on DPS is going to cause a much bigger swing in your overall raid damage, potentially requiring a week or more of additional gearing to beat DPS checks.

[ForsakenRoe]

I'm still very confused about RNG relations player seem's to have in the game :
- People want the old AST card system to came back.
- People blame crit RNG.

There is probably some nostalgia yes. But the point is, the theme of the AST, the identity and lore and what have you, is that it is a tarot-reading healer who bends fate to guide it's allies to victory. While it's subject to the capricious whims of fate, it has some control over that fate and can push it in certain directions, which is what we do with the card effects. RNG is a key part of the class's identity. By making all the card effects the same, the 'bending fate' feeling is lessened, because every 'fate' you can mess with (card effect) is essentially the same thing. It's like having an actual tarot reading that always draws the same cards, and gives the same prediction of 'you will be very successful in life because of X reason', at least sometimes IRL you get things like 'a chance encounter with someone in uniform will change your destiny' or such.

AOE Balance is the key reason it was so impactful in the past, yes. It's no secret that people started prioritizing that over everything else. But Balance was not the whole problem, so turning everything into 'Balance, but scuffed' was not the solution. The fact you could make it AOE, was probably more of an issue than the Balance itself, imo. Which is why the middle ground solution, that stares us in the face, is probably the best way to go forward: keep the cards single target as they are now, and add some unique flavorful effects back to them, while also giving them all damage contribution so the 'my parse' minded people don't complain too much about which they get. I've already said how I'd make them all useful on different roles (bole to tanks, ewer to healers, etc), the way they do their damage would be different thematically, ie reflecting enemy attacks back, 'spell multistrike', increasing AA damage, and with potency balancing they can be made to do roughly equal damage (I aimed for 30k damage). Once that's done, then they can have fun additional effects like movespeed, MP restoration, damage mitigation added too, and those are nice bonuses on top of the thing everyone's focused on, the damage. We never planned around having a 20% mit on the tank at X moment of a fight before, and we wouldn't with this change. But them taking 20% less damage from autoattacks is still nice to have, nobody's going to say 'no I would rather have nothing' and rightclick the buff off, are they?

But the two points you stated at the top, are the exact reason the argument falls apart. People hated how card RNG dictated your parse (and it was probably a pain for devs in terms of AST's contribution to a raid being so swingy), so it was turned into this 'everything is Balance' mush we have now. People still complain about Crit RNG and how that affects whether you hit enrage or not, and in some cases, how it affects their parse. So to me, that says 'people complain about literally anything, if it A: affects their parse, and B: they have no control over it'. So unless we delete Crits, damage variance (the swing of up to +5% and -5% on each hit), Direct Hits, etc, we'll see complaints still. Alternatively, we don't nuke 'fun' for the sake of perfect balance, and come to a sort of 'compromise position'. If I was working for SE, and I put enough effort in to balancing the numbers, I'd get the cards to all contribute the same damage. Just like now, which card you draw would basically not affect your parse. But they'd also have interesting bonus effects so they'd be more 'fun' to play with. A melee having movespeed cos of Arrow doesn't just mean they can move faster and it's a funny meme, it means they can potentially hit a positional easier. It means they can potentially greed one extra GCD. Stuff like that

[SenahPanipahr]

As someone still progressing through the story, I always assumed their rotations would "get better" (i.e. exist in the first place), or that encounters would start to demand much more healing. I love support roles in other games, but honest to god, finding out that they spent the last two expansions cutting Healer complexity so dramatically is the most upsetting thing I've experienced relative to this game. If I end up quitting, that will almost certainly be the primary reason.

Tanks and Healers both feel so homogenised, but on Healer it's so much more stark and depressing. The result is healer is only fun when there's a disaster going on -- if everyone in your party is excellent, playing Healer leaves you bored-to-tears.

[ForsakenRoe]

As someone still progressing through the story

This is the kind of post that makes me angry about the state of healers more than any other - someone who is progressing the story, the exact target of the 'make it less stressful for the casuals' changes SHB brought about, saying that it's boring. It shows that the changes were a complete failure, as they removed things for the sake of a section of the playerbase who don't feel the supposed positive effect of those changes, only the negative. It's impossible to say either way with people who have only experienced SHB healing onwards (and were not around for SB), but I would bet real money that if they were able to experience SB healing in some way (ie a private server, SE putting up a PTR of sorts to gauge feedback, etc), the majority would say they prefer having SB style gameplay, compared to what we have now

As for the post I'm responding to, I'd recommend looking into Dancer, and I see you've got RDM as your main class on the forums, which is the other I'd have suggested. Supporting allies is fun, healers in this game are uhh... prog's cool when everything's going wrong, sure. But the better we get at a fight, the more bland it becomes, it's very backwards in design.

[SenahPanipahr]

As for the post I'm responding to, I'd recommend looking into Dancer[...]

I actually have levelled every job to somewhere between 70 and 81 (except RPR, haven't unlocked that yet) so I have tried dancer a bit. Personally I have found it very dull compared to BRD, but maybe it becomes a little more interesting later on (much how early DRG is extremely rote but actually fun from around 72). Since you choose three jobs in the character selection screen on the forum, I just picked the jobs I play most in each role (RDM, SCH, PLD(/DRK)), and assumed all three would show up. Silly me!

I imagine I'm not super representative, as I love learning complex systems (enough that I've been getting into FFXI retail -- in no small part a result of my disappointment with job diversity in XIV). But I can't say I think you're wrong or anything ... maybe the "toxic casuals" ("you don't pay for my sub" types) would disagree, but I'm not sure anyone could in the long run. Healer is a fun way to experience new content, but once you know it (and more importantly, once others know it too) it quickly goes downhill.

The sad reality is, as a Healer main I've ended up subconsciously assuming other Healers struggle with the mechanics if they're playing those jobs by choice, because contrary to all the commends you get, it's far too easy. I mained Healer because I like the concept, but a big part of it was that it's often the only way to reliably cause the previous endgame raids and alliances to fire as you're progressing their questlines. But that just reinforces the sad truth that almost no one seems to want to play Healer at the moment. I can't imagine how many more hours I'd have wasted waiting on those queues to fire as a DPS...

Sage feels like a step in the right direction, but also highlights how bad the situation is; that the "DPS-focused Healer" still spends most of the time mashing the same button.

The lack of hard job roles in FFXI has been such a breath of fresh air from this system where 3/4 Healers are almost exactly the same during 99% of playtime, and 3/4 Tanks are the same builder-spender playstyle. The perceived need for everything to be perfectly balanced so you can take your "class fantasy" to any content is backfiring when the expression of that class fantasy is only skin-deep aesthetics, and the actual gameplay is exactly the same 99% of the time.

I've refrained from trying to buy a house despite having the crafting skills to furnish one, because I can't imagine myself continuing my sub enough to keep it in the long term. Maybe that's a different issue, but the collective experience of such startling highs and depressing lows is really starting to upset me.

[ty_taurus]

I actually have levelled every job to somewhere between 70 and 81 (except RPR, haven't unlocked that yet) so I have tried dancer a bit. Personally I have found it very dull compared to BRD, but maybe it becomes a little more interesting later on (much how early DRG is extremely rote but actually fun from around 72).

Honestly, Dancer really relies on its entire kit to feel more fulfilling. A lot of the enjoyment, for me at least, stems from trying to set up every burst window to be as perfect as possible. It's a job that I think really suffers from having so many of its more interesting tools earned so late. I really want to see Flourish moved down to level 50, a weaker Saber Dance learned between 50 and 60, and Fan Dance IV moved down to 74. It would help the leveling experience and the synched experience a lot more.

[ForsakenRoe]

Honestly, Dancer really relies on its entire kit to feel more fulfilling.

Happens to a lot of jobs nowadays, annoyingly. RPR feels dogwater without Enshroud which you only get at 80, SGE feels more and more wonky the lower you sync, as you're forced into more and more GCD healing to cover the OGCDs you normally have, and I'd never have decided to do SHB story as GNB if it weren't for being able to see what it's like at 70 via HOH, Continuation instantly sold me on the job but without that HOH run to test it, GNB-at-60 was WAR level dull to me

They really gotta make more use of traits that upgrade things for jobs, give lower level/reduced effect versions of things (eg, at one point Barrage gave your next attack 2 hits, and a trait later made it be 3 hits). DNC not getting Flourish till 72 makes the class feel like a car that can't start cos it's too cold

[Aravell]

Honestly, Dancer really relies on its entire kit to feel more fulfilling. A lot of the enjoyment, for me at least, stems from trying to set up every burst window to be as perfect as possible. It's a job that I think really suffers from having so many of its more interesting tools earned so late. I really want to see Flourish moved down to level 50, a weaker Saber Dance learned between 50 and 60, and Fan Dance IV moved down to 74. It would help the leveling experience and the synched experience a lot more.

Honestly, DNC feels extra awful in UCoB and UWU because they don't have Flourish. It always feels like something is missing whenever you use Technical Step. Same as RPR feeling extra awful in TEA because you don't have Communio, so Enshroud kind of just ends, also no Plentiful Harvest for Enshroud opener. SAM also feeling generally awful in lv70 content.

[SenahPanipahr]

Honestly, Dancer really relies on its entire kit to feel more fulfilling. A lot of the enjoyment, for me at least, stems from trying to set up every burst window to be as perfect as possible. It's a job that I think really suffers from having so many of its more interesting tools earned so late. I really want to see Flourish moved down to level 50, a weaker Saber Dance learned between 50 and 60, and Fan Dance IV moved down to 74. It would help the leveling experience and the synched experience a lot more.

That explains it I guess. Most of my dancer experience has been tiredly retreading the Crystal Tower alliance raids (I wish they'd lower the item level sync, if they refuse to incentivise people running/unlocking other alliance raids), or if I'm lucky, one of the Mhach raids. Maybe I assumed because I already have everything bound and it's not that many buttons that it wouldn't play very differently at higher levels, but I understand the error in presuming that. I did wonder if I was missing something, given Zepla seems to be rather fond of DNC.

@ForsakenRoe No kidding, SGE is so strange feeling at lower levels. Personally I wouldn't complain if they just made it that certain jobs couldn't do duties below a certain level via roulettes, but maybe that would cause other issues.