What makes a good Job mechanically?

[Renathras]

Yeah, I know, an open ended question. But I'm curious for the answers. I'm not entirely sure the best way to word it, though.

So setting aesthetics aside and breaking it down to purely mechanics, rotation, resources, flow, and utility (if any); what makes a good Job to you, personally?

[Turtledeluxe]

Ideally in an MMO jobs all bring something unique to the table. But in this game it feels like everyone is a dps.

But I guess to answer the question, I think jobs are fun when they gave a core loop that leads to the higher ceiling of whatever (dps, support, healing, defensiveness, whatever) with a mix of secondary skills and damage dealers. That's why I like BLM because it's a loop of ice and fire with sprinkles of thunder or xenoglossy or whatever. I think some jobs should be selfishlessly about one thing and others should be hybrids.

[Cilia]

Having a mechanic no other job uses.

Back in the olden days DRK actually functioned uniquely among the Tank jobs by, believe it or not, requiring MP management since Darkside (the DPS boosting stance) could be used in conjunction with Grit (which, at the time, lowered your DPS output) to achieve not quite standard DPS while still tanking, something no other Tank could do at the time. Unfortunately they've since reworked it and it now runs on a meter like 3/4 of the Tanks, but it was special.

Nowadays the "special functioning" Tank job is actually GNB, which instead of being a meter maid runs on charges and has one of (if not the) longest combo attack(s) in the game.

Ideally in an MMO jobs all bring something unique to the table. But in this game it feels like everyone is a dps.

Always have been.

[Turtledeluxe]

Always have been.

It's a pretty big L imo when the game has so much potential with all its jobs to have build diversity and true specialization. Even though BLM is my favorite job it's kind of a letdown in the sense that fire is the main damage dealer by default and my build options are crit or spell speed. It's fun to play thankfully but the game keeps things a tad too simple imo just by design. It's funny that they push you to level all classes when mostly what separates them is cosmetic. At least we have different base stats.

[Rithy255]

Ideally in an MMO jobs all bring something unique to the table. But in this game it feels like everyone is a dps.

But I guess to answer the question, I think jobs are fun when they gave a core loop that leads to the higher ceiling of whatever (dps, support, healing, defensiveness, whatever) with a mix of secondary skills and damage dealers. That's why I like BLM because it's a loop of ice and fire with sprinkles of thunder or xenoglossy or whatever. I think some jobs should be selfishlessly about one thing and others should be hybrids.

I'll agree and extend to why everyjob being a burst JOB ruins the game. As DPS right now seems to be the only way jobs can have some uniqueness

Ontop of that everything being hyper DPS focused, where nothing support wise matters as long as a job can squeeze out a tiny bit more damage then the others that's what makes it "meta", makes Tank/healer have to be so close to each other in everything that they've become different flavours.

Personally I want the game to put more importance on utility, skills so that Tank and Healer can bring unique things on the table, heck even phys ranged is meant to be somewhat utility focused. Not to say that would just be a easy change to make that one person could solve over night, but I think balance goes beyond making every damage number the same and making every job play the same.

[Turtledeluxe]

I'll agree and extend to why everyjob being a burst JOB ruins the game. As DPS right now seems to be the only way jobs can have some uniqueness

Ontop of that everything being hyper DPS focused, where nothing support wise matters as long as a job can squeeze out a tiny bit more damage then the others that's what makes it "meta", makes Tank/healer have to be so close to each other in everything that they've become different flavours.

Personally I want the game to put more importance on utility, skills so that Tank and Healer can bring unique things on the table, heck even phys ranged is meant to be somewhat utility focused. Not to say that would just be a easy change to make that one person could solve over night, but I think balance goes beyond making every damage number the same and making every job play the same.

The game in general is completely predicated around dealing damage to HP sponges and avoiding attacks. There's almost zero shining moments for a healer outside near wipe scenarios and even worse for buffers as they are tacking on non meaningful increases on already insane damage.

Given that we are dealing with an outdated engine and outdated combat it's a deadly combo situation where I just don't see room for improvement. They tried to create the illusion of healer and buffer experience by originally designing jobs based on resource management, button presses, etc. People complained, so now most roadblocks are gone and jobs are just simplified damage rotators.

What else can they really do when we don't have elemental weaknesses, true build diversity (may as well just go crit) , complex level design, diverse encounters (physics of the fights are constricted by the engine), etc? The game is just too old to really put a new spin on combat and, by extension, job roles without doing some seriously risky new concepts the team clearly has no intention of investigating.

As a BLM I look forward to my two new spells that do modify Xenoglossy for 10s or something.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Non-convoluted rotations for me.



Monk is annoying because it has optimal drift windows. All the jobs are currently annoying because of how strict the rotations are for optimal dps due to the 2 min buff windows. Get slightly out of alignment and your dps tanks.



That's just not fun. I don't want to make sloppy play good, but it shouldn't need to be this strict either.

[Amarande]

Non-convoluted rotations for me.

Monk is annoying because it has optimal drift windows. All the jobs are currently annoying because of how strict the rotations are for optimal dps due to the 2 min buff windows. Get slightly out of alignment and your dps tanks.

That's just not fun. I don't want to make sloppy play good, but it shouldn't need to be this strict either.

Mood here. On top of that you have some jobs' primary gearing objective as a result being to absolutely micro manage SkS (as in needing one of the few specific exact GCDs that divide exactly evenly into 120s) so that their big hits land exactly on time.

SAM went from being one of my fave DPS in Stormblood to "ugh I hate this" territory in Shadowbringers and the GCD management (not to mention artificial suboptimal filler based thereupon) for the sake of aligning Tsubame was one of the biggest drivers. Wasn't this whole thing why they got rid of Accuracy, because having to micro manage a specific stat that exactly (unlike the "the more the better" universality of all the other stats) was miserable? (Heck. Even WoW got rid of its multiple flavors of Hit Rating for that reason. When even Blizzard decides something is too unfun ...)

I main DNC these days and I'm not sure if we're supposed to do the same for Tillana or not (to be fair, I'm not sure there's much of anything static about DNC with how many random proc things you have to fire off, other than trying to do your dances on time every cooldown, which combined with how much depends on your dance partner's performance rather than your own makes it perfect for an okay-but-not-great player like myself, lol).

IMO, it seems like optimally, most classes should get the vast majority of their performance relatively easily by simply doing the holy trinity of "obvious button is obvious" "keep your GCD rolling" and "don't clip your GCD by overweaving" and then get a little bit of extra performance wiggle for the "super tryhard" types to show off, although given that serious players usually rank based on percentile competition rather than raw performance, I'm not sure how much it would help the culture at this point, either.

As for the "everything is a DPS" thing: it would be nice if the Tank and especially Healer roles were more emphasized as well, but I am also after many years of gaming not entirely sure how or even if this is practically feasible.

Healer, in particular, needs to be able to pull off saves, otherwise you're just a maintenance babysitter for predictable routine damage, which actually explains a lot of the discontent among the healer crowd.

Personally, I like WHM for things like it being comfy for some solo tasks, especially Solo Duties which historically were very tense on DPS while healers' self sustain eased the stress a lot, but yeah ... you can't save anyone these days, because everything that's not an instakill comes with a punishment mechanic now, and if it DOESN'T have a punishment mechanic, well ... something happened to player culture in the past 15 years or so and I'm not too thrilled with it. Used to be that standing in the fire was universally condemned - now unless there is some punishment OTHER than straight non-oneshot damage, it's actually expected to the point that you're out of touch if you complain about it. Heck, even Vulns often don't cut it anymore, which is why so many fights have those awful damage downs (or just more straight instakills) ...

[Shurrikhan]

Mood here. On top of that you have some jobs' primary gearing objective as a result being to absolutely micro manage SkS (as in needing one of the few specific exact GCDs that divide exactly evenly into 120s) so that their big hits land exactly on time.

SAM went from being one of my fave DPS in Stormblood to "ugh I hate this" territory in Shadowbringers and the GCD management (not to mention artificial suboptimal filler based thereupon) for the sake of aligning Tsubame was one of the biggest drivers.

We already had GCD alignment for the sake of aligning old Hagakure and Higanbana, though, complete with suboptimal filler based thereupon.

Had TG been usable for 5s after your most recent Iaijutsu cast or until you again generated Sen, the two would have had near identical gameplay in terms of centering our rotation around their milestones.



Personally, I enjoyed both for that same reason you seem to dislike them, mostly. But I preferred Hagakure over Tsubame simply because I frequently get high packet loss, which could then eat either of those two abilities on press, and I could at many GCD tiers give myself more time before overcapping Sen to get Hagakure off with minimal and basically linear opportunity cost (at least unless I outright consume Sen via IJ or overcap them), whereas Tsubame would mean having to wait another 9 whole GCDs without Meikyo to Kaeshi: Midare because you only had that immediate next GCD in which to use it.

And... there wasn't much good reason for that stricture beyond just the skill looking slightly cooler with no other weaponskills between them. The ceiling would be very slightly higher, actually, if you could Tsubame up to a few GCDs later, even if "skill gap" between basic failure and no basic failure were less.


For me, perfect would just be the ability to store Tsubame either until next available Iaijutsu (which would allow for button consolidation, if you used TG's CD alike to a charge timer laid over the top of Iaijutsu's icon), or just to be held indefinitely (which is of more interesting use to dungeons, PvP, and other content including a greater number of initial engagements and/or targets with lower TTK).

In that system, leave Hagakure as an at-cost option of 2 GCDs' cooldown, but give an upgrade to Hagakure, too, with each upgrade or new action that increases its opportunity cost, such as by giving it an increasing chance to grant 5 more Kenki per Sen. That way it doesn't go from an at-cost "option" increasingly towards an outright "trap".

[Eisi]

Non-convoluted rotations for me.



Monk is annoying because it has optimal drift windows.

This is so horrible to read. I love Optimal Drift Monk and to know that players find it annoying and not fun like me breaks my heart. I just love how adaptable Monk is and how it's not just a rigid 1-2-3-4-5 but instead varies based on priority. You can always easily get back into the flow from downtime. All I wish is to build a bit of natural variance into the kit via rng in for example the timers.