Rotations: Making them DIFFERENT

[Post]

I think the lesson to be learned is that if you want the rotations to feel different then they shouldn't start off by trying to make them conform to the 2min meta. PLD's felt more distinct before it was fixed to fit in 6.3, and here most of the suggestions are to trim a thing or two that would make it fit better because they're buttons that feel vestigial because they're simply potency now (akin to many healer tools like Celestial Opposition or arguably ground targeted fields with their massive ranges today), or easily combined every minute.

I wish they'd just break some shit. Players will always figure out the best way to play whatever their given, and the only time they're ever in a rush to make adjustments is when there's actually an imbalance in performance, so it gets fixed during the expansion. Not when all the jobs in a single role feel equally boring.

[ForsakenRoe]

I wish they'd just break some shit. Players will always figure out the best way to play whatever their given, and the only time they're ever in a rush to make adjustments is when there's actually an imbalance in performance, so it gets fixed during the expansion. Not when all the jobs in a single role feel equally boring.

Players: 'AST is literally giving people RSI because it's burst window is so APM heavy'

SE: 'i sleep'

Players: 'A melee class is only 8% ahead of the ranged, instead of the allotted 10% they're meant to be (because they have melee privelige)'

SE: 'quick +10 potency on all main combo skills, and 50 on it's 2min burst skill'

SE: 'also, nerf RDM again'

[Renathras]

There's a couple of candidates for button consolidation on current PLD I can think of;

1: Combine FoF and Req
Self explanatory, we're already double-weaving them as-is

2: Replace Goring with Req
Goring feels vestigial and boring, whereas Req begins a new phase in the rotation, they're already on the same timer and get used close together.

Agreed with both. Goring is just stupid at this point, and Req and FoF being two different buttons makes no sense. I've even contemplated making Shield Bash upgrade to Goring under Req/FoF just to help trim button bloat (Shield Bash actually IS useful in Deep Dungeons and is some of that - rather elusive these days - RP/class fantasy flavor, so removing it would be sad), but Goring in particular is just "Why is this here?", and FoF/Req are always used together anyway, as is Req and Confetior, so combining Req with either of those would just...make sense. Also would help with that oddly short range that Req has for god only knows what reason.

[That said: I like Goring's animation WAY better than Royal Authority, which is probably my least favorite melee attack animation IN THE ENTIRE GAME. I'd much rather they use Goring's animation for Royal. Makes me think of the Armor Break Knight attacks from Final Fantasy Tactics.]

WHM made like current PLD would basically be Stone, Aero, Water (all instant cast GCDs that boost the potency of the next one if used in the correct order), Dia (Holy Spirit) or Holy (Holy Circle), Glare Glare Glare (Atonement), Presence of Mind (FoF/Req combined, say; what we want to do with PLD anyway), Ancient Holy, Quake, Tornado, Flood (same button pressed four times). Banish and something (Aqualung?) for AOE 1-2 combo. All spells are instant cast unless Dia/Holy is used outside of a combo. That would be WHM turned into PLD's rotation.

People would complain it plays too much like a Ranged Physical, and its healing would be gimped or it would wreck its DPS to use it, and a lot of people would find ways to mess it up. All healing other than maybe Cure 2 or 3 (whichever becomes our Clemency) would have to be converted to oGCD spells (Cure 2, Medica, Medica 2) which also have no MP cost. Why? Because all Tank defensive CDs are oGCDs and none have MP cost associated with them. If we're really doing a 1-to-1 comparison here. Other than the Clemency substitute. Only Dia, Holy, Ancient Holy/Quake/Tornado/Flood, and Cure 2 (or 3) under this model have MP costs.

[NO! DRK does not count! I know what you're thinking, and fine, if you want to have Divine Benison cost MP and refund it when it breaks, whatever. ]

So, is there any lesson to be learned from PLD rotation changes for healers?

In a way, yes.

PLD has changed to where you can place casted spells in rotations and not break the combos (casting Clemency won't break the 1-2-3 base combo), and likewise, one thing that's a really good idea is the rotational flexibility of HS. When you use 1-2-3, you have HS that you can use either in the -X slot that comes next OR -Y, -Z, -A (during the Atonement stack) OR the following -1 or -2. Or to write it as such, 1-2-3-_-_-_-_-(1)_-(2)_-3 you can move it flexibly anywhere at any of the _ spots, either using it after -3 and before Atonement, anywhere during Atonement, or after the following first two hits of the subsequent combo.

I think having a flexible healing system like that could work. So instead of doing the above (which is just PLD's rotation with WHM spell names), what might work better in practice is Stone-Aero-Water-3x Holy (or Glare, whatever) (as per one of my suggestions before, this would require making Holy work like Cure 3 where it can be cast at range OR centered on the caster, but that's not an issue since the tech exists already for that), where every Water cast grants you a free, instant-cast Cure/Medica spell of your choosing, and casting a heal this way generates a charge of Blood Lily. Next up, add something to PoM where it actually increases damage dealt by something (20%, say) and where you can spend the stacked Blood Lilies (suppose they stack to 3) on a chain of Miseries that ends with Afflatus Purgation (sorta like the pre-EW Paladin HS into Confetior chain). Aside from this, you can also cast any heal spell any time you want, obviously, but with the full cast time and MP cost. And you'd probably have some oGCD heals on the side like Asylum or Tetra still. All the damage spells can be instant casts like PLD, I guess, or 1.5 sec casts, I suppose?

Note that Aero is not a DoT here, it's just ranged Riot Blade. The 1-2-3 is just a different VFX and scaling combo potency (probably through some kind of "Aero Ready" and "Water Ready" and "Glare/Holy Ready" proc system). If that feels pointless, we could simply substitute that with 3x Glares like we...have now then 3x Dias as the Atonement ability. Doesn't matter too much.

That is, you have a 1-2-3 combo, a -4-4-4 Atonement-like stack, but instead of Holy Spirit being a damage spell, in this construction it's a free healing spell you can use that generates Blood Lily charges, that you then want to spend under Presence of Mind's boosted damage/burst phase and end with a Purgation. It's relatively simple, doesn't have a lot of overhead to juggle, but doesn't hard-lock you into a rotation so you have flexibility in the rotational healing as well as freedom to pause the rotation to just heal at any time, and provides healing and movement as part of the core rotation.

Something that works healing into the rotation like this and provides a burst phase is probably a good way to translate this into a Healer Job in a pseudo-ARPG combat system, since you have the redundancy of backup heals but also have the heals that can be flexibly moved through the rotation to meet needs (worst case scenario if no one needs healing, you spend that instant-cast, MP free "Lily" charge on a Regen or Medica 2)

That's my take, anyway.

I'm not sure this would translate to any/all Healers, and WHM may not even be the best vehicle for it (I will continue to insist that SGE makes the most sense for an ARPG-esque Healer Job), but I could see something like that working.

But I think the big thing that new PLD has that is a good lesson learned is how useful flexibility in the rotation is. Even if it's only a little. Because it provides something people always point out they want more of - choice. It's like SMN; for all the flack it gets, you can move the three Primals around and use them in whatever order you deem most beneficial. It may not seem like much, but it makes the rotation more dynamic/less static, gives the player some agency in how they want to play out their rotation, and allows an at least slightly meaningful choice on the part of the player.

Old PLD's rotation was muscle memory, as there was generally only one right way to do it, and the only mild choice was which set of Atonements you wanted to drop one of. New PLD gives you quite a bit more flexibility in HS use, which one could argue isn't much, but it's quite a lot compared to how static and immutable most FFXIV Job rotations are these days, or even to what old PLD was (the flexibility was mostly in the setup/opener, but you were largely locked into a consistent and static rotation after that point).

I highly disagree with Post - New PLD feels different to me from all the other three Tanks. It consistently confuses me that people think it isn't. If anything, it seems more distinct to me now since it's not stuck in a rigid rotation anymore. It's similar only from a 10,000 foot overview that would say "NIN plays just like WAR", but in terms of how it feels, it feels completely different to me to play, personally. So did old PLD, but the argument old PLD had this and new PLD does not seems wrong to me.

SE: 'also, nerf RDM again'

Agreed, and this is the weirdest thing since it kind of goes against their general "no nerfs" philosophy.

Granted, I suppose they technically just left RDM alone, but...it was already underperforming and they buffed its competition and not it, so, in relative terms, a nerf.

[vetch]

[That said: I like Goring's animation WAY better than Royal Authority, which is probably my least favorite melee attack animation IN THE ENTIRE GAME. I'd much rather they use Goring's animation for Royal. Makes me think of the Armor Break Knight attacks from Final Fantasy Tactics.]

It's one of my biggest problems with continually trimming and trimming skills from kits but without giving us any kind of 'skill glamour' system to offset the times when the visual "upgrade" du jour looks horrendous. As memeworthy as it was to kill Selene but allow Eos to wear her skin, I think I'm glad they at least left us the option.

It's like SMN; for all the flack it gets, you can move the three Primals around and use them in whatever order you deem most beneficial. It may not seem like much, but it makes the rotation more dynamic/less static, gives the player some agency in how they want to play out their rotation, and allows an at least slightly meaningful choice on the part of the player.

I guess I just find such a definition of 'choice' to be so constrained as to not merit the word. You have the 'choice' to do damage, or to do damage, or to do damage, but you can do those damages in any order that suits you! Yippee!

As much as a certain segment of the population claims that SMN 'finally feels like a Final Fantasy summoner', I find this to be wrong, and mostly based on surface-level assessments of aesthetics and visuals. (Speaking of visuals, why do we have to wait until endgame to summon an actual summon instead of a chicken nugget? Talk about failing to give new players little reasons keep playing...)

Pre-6.0 SMN, much derided as 'discount WoWlock' with its three pets where you actually wanted a different one for different situations, actually felt like a (small, scuffed) mirror of the versatility of the classic FF mechanic -- which as you recall, saw summons like Sylph and Kirin and Starlet for healing, Golem and Phantom and Carbuncle and Zoneseek for protection, Cerberus to buff your spellcasting, Doomtrain and Stray and Siren for enemy debuffing, and on and on and on.

Old SMN was a passable inheritor of the legacy in spirit, if not visuals. New SMN feels like a non-Final Fantasy-player's idea of what a Final Fantasy summoner does.

[SenahPanipahr]

It's one of my biggest problems with continually trimming and trimming skills from kits but without giving us any kind of 'skill glamour' system to offset the times when the visual "upgrade" du jour looks horrendous. As memeworthy as it was to kill Selene but allow Eos to wear her skin, I think I'm glad they at least left us the option.

Oh my god, yes. It's so sad to look at old videos and see these gorgeous animations that you never got to experience. I'm not sure I even disagree with Enochian being made a passive but the animation was super cool. Your idea of "action glam" would be a great reward those later job quests that otherwise don't give you very much in real time rewards.

As for SMN, I like some of the new visuals compared to what I've seen of the previous iterations', but I agree that the mechanics feel very surface given you are hitting the same buttons for all the elements. (Pressing the same button/keys obviously isn't the problem, but the effective difference between them being so minor is.) The Ruby/Topaz/Emerald prefixed abilities have so little difference between them that it should be seen as antithetical to the job design, much as making all AST cards the same defeats the core idea.

[ForsakenRoe]

The Ruby/Topaz/Emerald prefixed abilities have so little difference between them that it should be seen as antithetical to the job design, much as making all AST cards the same defeats the core idea.

They have so little difference in fact, they're the exact same VFX as the base Ruin cast, up until the level they become 'Ruby/Topaz/Emerald Rite' instead of just 'Ruby Ruin III' etc. Like, iirc they don't even change the color to suit the element or anything (I can't be bothered to log in to double check that so I might be wrong'

[Aravell]

They have so little difference in fact, they're the exact same VFX as the base Ruin cast, up until the level they become 'Ruby/Topaz/Emerald Rite' instead of just 'Ruby Ruin III' etc. Like, iirc they don't even change the color to suit the element or anything (I can't be bothered to log in to double check that so I might be wrong'

I was logged in, so I went and checked. No, they didn't change a thing about them, they look exactly like Ruin III, they couldn't even be bothered to tint it red/green/yellow or something.