For those who main/semi-main a DPS (e.g. DNC, RDM) but like Healers...

[Renathras]

No one has disagreed with this, only with what creates "choice".

To a degree, said "choice" is always an illusion (and is generally more aptly described only as "optimization", especially from an amount of information that is significant but not wholly complete, as to allow for educated gambles), but that illusion goes a whole lot further if the best choice requires some degree of mathing out in the moment instead of following rote procedures (use action type A for situation A, with no contextual variation to how either the action nor situation are defined).

Glad we agree, then.

[B]Then your problem isn't one of "choice" or even a different way of defining it. It's that you want a challenge that you can more easily meet completely.

No, it has nothing to do with a thing being easy to do.

1) I don't mind minimal variations. For my part, I like doing things right because it's enjoyable to know that. The damage bonus isn't a reward to me, and I've been consistent on the point that I don't see "more damage" (or much anything to do with damage) to be rewarding.

2) No, I simply hold the position that people literally asking to be made to work harder shouldn't then demand they get more reward for working harder when the Devs' initial position was having them not work harder and they kept demanding to be forced to work harder. There's no second class citizen in it. To quote Chair "Tell them that their reward is getting to have FUN and not being bored out of their [redacted] minds! Shut up about a whole 2% damage variance."

In other words, more damage (or some significantly greater damage) isn't at all necessary. Though in this case, it isn't even that so much as it's more a survivability argument (mobility) anyway.

Same.

\o/
Agreed.

[Supersnow845]

^in the current healer design the flexibility comes from the healing side

Going back to the example of storms eye the complexity of an equivalent DOT isn’t current Dia is rigid while storms eye Dia gives choice therefore storms eye Dia must be more complex, it is the fact that in a healer rotation the 21111111112111111 is fixed and you need to plan the healing around that

Using an example of chances of lost dot ticks
If Dia is rigid

Refreshing at time n ticks after reaching 0 seconds = 0 then lost damage = 0
Refreshing at time n ticks after reaching 0 seconds = n then lost damage = n ticks
Refreshing at time n ticks after reaching 0 seconds = n+1 then lost damage = n+1 ticks

If Dia is not rigid

Refreshing at time n ticks after reaching 0 seconds = 0 then lost damage = 0
Refreshing at time n ticks after reaching 0 seconds = n then lost damage = 0
Refreshing at time n ticks after reaching 0 seconds = n+1 then lost damage = 0


So this becomes the problem, dia itself isn’t good, I for one hate modern DOT’s that have zero interaction with the kit (this includes DOT associated abilities like queen, dark passenger and deaths design) and it’s so frustrating SCH originally did have 2 skills that interacted with DOT’s (namely bane and shadowflare) but lost them. Now as for attempting to make modern DOT’s slightly more interesting I’ve always suggested having DOT ticks proc something it the DOT is up long enough (biolysis could proc quickened aetherflow if it’s up for the entire 45 seconds of your initial aetherflow so it doesn’t mess up the timeline, e dosis could proc a toxicon stack, Dia could proc overcure, combust could proc an extra charge of redraw), something that rewards you for keeping the dot up but only works if you don’t overwrite it with more than 5 seconds left

That would be my patchwork fix to modern DOT’s (though I still think bane aero 3 and shadowflare have absolutely no reason to not still be in the game) but overall something like this would be more of an interesting way to give DOT’s uniqueness without attempting to implement a storms eye style system to feel like you are introducing false choice which simulates complexity (while actually making it easier)

[Renathras]

^in the current healer design the flexibility comes from the healing side

Yeah, but that's why I mention something like this for Dia, or Holy Might on PLD, or the Primals for SMN. They're all examples of rotations that allow the player to move pieces around in them to react or proactively deal with mechanics. I'd like more of those.

As to your point:

Perhaps unsurprisingly, I think the solution would be to try something different with each Healer. Give one a DoT that stacks, give another 2-3 DoTs, give another a DoT that procs things, and have a fourth one that just doesn't have a DoT (probably SGE, if they actually gave it a rotation like RDM or something...)

Personally, I'm just tired of all the Healers playing the same-ish. I'd like to see them all play at least somewhat differently. SGE pressing Eukrasia before it's Dia/Biolysis/Combust isn't really different enough to satisfy that desire.

[Connor]

Isn’t the whole ‘easy / hard’ job designs thing ultimately a little arbitrary? No matter how they design a job it’s going to come down to personal preferences in the end. I think the developers philosophy of designating jobs as ‘easy’ or ‘hard’ is doomed to fail as a result.


Surely it makes sense to just design the jobs to be fun, engaging and with distinct identities, then allow the community / players to make the decision of ‘hard or easy’ themselves?

Of course, something can be objectively too hard or too easy when there’s a major consensus lol but then it’s also adjustable through patches etc so it’s not like a class would end up game-breakingly difficult or exceptionally easy (look at the Summoner rework backlash lol)

[ForsakenRoe]

Surely it makes sense to just design the jobs to be fun, engaging and with distinct identities, then allow the community / players to make the decision of ‘hard or easy’ themselves?

This is what I'd aim for, balance the potencies of things in such a way that it's a gain to do the optimal rotation as you'd expect, but the 'punishment' for doing suboptimal rotation is less. For example, rather than having Biolysis at 70 per tick, it could be lowered to 35 per tick, and the missing damage allocated to a second and third DOT, so missing a tick from all three is roughly equal to what you'd lose now, but forgetting to refresh only one of the DOTs for one tick would be less punishing than current.

My WHM redesign loses 160p per minute if you completely ignore the new GCD skill and just carry on playing 'refresh Dia, spam Glare' style, that's about half a Glare per minute total. My AST card rework would lose 200p per minute if you don't use the new Minor Arcana cards whatsoever, 80% of a single Malefic. It's enough for optimizers to have a gain over non-optimizers, something to chase in logs (Energy Drain being 100p shows that even small potencies are enough to matter), but the difference is also small enough that the margin for error is lower, missing every Minor Arcana card across the entire fight is not going to cause you to hit enrage in Extreme trials, heck it might not even cause enrage in Savage week 1 thanks to crit variance

[Shurrikhan]

Isn’t the whole ‘easy / hard’ job designs thing ultimately a little arbitrary? No matter how they design a job it’s going to come down to personal preferences in the end. I think the developers philosophy of designating jobs as ‘easy’ or ‘hard’ is doomed to fail as a result.


Surely it makes sense to just design the jobs to be fun, engaging and with distinct identities, then allow the community / players to make the decision of ‘hard or easy’ themselves?

Of course, something can be objectively too hard or too easy when there’s a major consensus lol but then it’s also adjustable through patches etc so it’s not like a class would end up game-breakingly difficult or exceptionally easy (look at the Summoner rework backlash lol)

As long as the devs do ultimately consider added risk as being deserving of some (even if less than quite proportionate) added reward, I'll be happy. I'm just tired of people grandstanding (more frequent on EW release) on this sidea of "fairness" as equal rDPS+aDPS for all despite whatever ease (below average difficulty), reliability, and/or utility they bring to the table. If Job A can significantly more easily make the clear requirements than Job B, then Job B at least ought to have something on offer in turn beyond just "not getting bored".

I don't think any jobs should be designed specifically to be hard or easy. I think they should just take a kernel idea and extend it out as far and in as many ways as would seem to maximize enjoyment (with later additions doubling up on or complimenting what came before, as we'd expect that job's players to weigh higher those means of engagement). No more, no less. But if that organic development leads to a lower or higher skill ceiling, so be it; you'd just tune accordingly if it became a noticeable balance issue.

[Renathras]

Idolize

Why do you do this?

I'm quoting him because overall his point is more like your own, but I found his argument compelling. If I quote something from Socrates that I found compelling, would you accuse me of idolizing him?

Why limit the rewards of having optimized a situation to "minimal variations"? And why should any job necessarily be constrained to that small gap between skill floor and ceiling?

Because it's a videogame and that's what people find fun. No one finds being blacklisted fun, so that's a no-go and limits how much damage variation can exist. If the playerbase was still consistently taking people that did 30% less damage, sure, we could have massive variances. But the community doesn't, so it doesn't work.

As to why have some Jobs - not all, some - with a narrower gap between floor and ceiling: Because some players don't want a large gap between floor and ceiling.

Surely it makes sense to just design the jobs to be fun, engaging and with distinct identities, then allow the community / players to make the decision of ‘hard or easy’ themselves?

Agreed. The Jobs can fit their various class fantasies and have different playstyles, then players will gravitate to the ones they like best. If some like an "easy" or "hard" playstyle, they pick that one. If they like the mechanics of one or another, they pick that. Make things and let plaeyrs decide which they like best. This requires, though, that they're actually...different from one another and not various forms of copy. If one healer plays like WHM another like current RDM (but with heals) and another like current BLM (but also with heals), then that's not bad.

[Semirhage]

As to why have some Jobs - not all, some - with a narrower gap between floor and ceiling: Because some players don't want a large gap between floor and ceiling.

Oprah_See_What_I_Mean.gif

[Shurrikhan]

I'm quoting him because overall his point is more like your own, but I found his argument compelling. If I quote something from Socrates that I found compelling, would you accuse me of idolizing him?

If --in place of anything solid, be it your own or otherwise-- you choose an argument from him with a contextually gaping hole or obvious hypocrisy in it... all atop having made a months-long campaign out of an idea you say was taken from him ... yeah, as it seems unlikely you'd otherwise think that shit sufficient.

Because it's a videogame and that's what people find fun. No one finds being blacklisted fun, so that's a no-go and limits how much damage variation can exist.

No, having only minimal variation as a result of skillful play is not some super broadly held preference. It's yours.

(And it's a direction that's necessarily limiting; while having higher skill ceilings while jobs are still able to clear with highly imperfect performance creates something for everyone --as one can simply play to that ~60% maximal effort for ~90% of the maximal value and still meet the checks for all but the very hardest content, just with less the carry potential for others-- purposely limiting a job's ceiling just means that the job excludes anyone who wants a greater amount of engagement from their kit itself.)

And the "blacklisting" goes both ways, as why would any PF leader take, say, a BLM over a SMN if there is only at most a "minimal variation" in their max throughput yet the BLM is far harder pressed to even get clear-capable damage out of, let alone its max.

If the playerbase was still consistently taking people that did 30% less damage, sure, we could have massive variances. But the community doesn't, so it doesn't work.

The difference between a BLM's 95th percentile throughput and a SMN's is 8%, even with SMN also bringing additional utility. Even if SMN were nerfed to a fairer position relative to RDM instead of RDM being buffed to equal or greater rDPS, we'd be talking about a ~9% difference. No one is asking for a whopping 30% gap between them, only that the harder jobs shouldn't be a reward-less hazard.

When you can clear every Savage fight with a party that averages a performance of just ~75% of what each job in that party can maximally produce, asking that a job that is harder to optimize to the point of clearing (has 40% more deviation despite only 8% more max damage) should at least have enough of a max throughput gap to make it worth learning and taking... is not asking for the world. It's literally what's necessary not to see such jobs blacklisted for being holdouts against skill ceilings being increasingly squished.



Why hyperbolize?

[Renathras]

If --in place of anything solid, be it your own or otherwise--

...which is why I also make my own arguments. I tend to use that quote because it's WAY more succinct than I could put it. Shurrikhan, you know how long winded I can be. Do you doubt for a moment if I tried to say that in my own words it would end up being PARAGRAPHS in length?

all atop having made a months-long campaign out of an idea you say was taken from him

I've never once said the idea was taken from him. I never have made that claim once. I was making the argument for the idea well before I ever saw his video, and actually felt mildly vindicated that even a kind of hardcore guy who was endlessly complaining about how braindead healers were now had the same idea as me. Naively, I thought that might resonate with some of you. I was mistaken, of course.

Indeed, quite the opposite of me claiming it, several OF YOU GUYS have claimed that's where I got the idea (generally to discredit it or me or both), and stubbornly, keep doing so even after I've debunked the claim multiple times.

No, having only minimal variation as a result of skillful play is not some super broadly held preference. It's yours.

Prove it.

Why hyperbolize?

You're the one saying literally no one but me holds the position that I do. I think you're the one that should be asked that question first.