Jobs should gain their core rotations much earlier

[SargeTheSeagull]

Jobs below level 50 (or in some cases 60/70 or for reaper 80) are horrifically boring due to how few buttons they have. I understand they’re like this as to not overwhelm new players but I don’t think giving sprouts more opportunities to have fun at earlier levels is a bad idea. In my own experience, a lot of friends I’ve tried to get into 14 have bounced off due to how unfun jobs are early on. Plus, giving jobs their rotations at earlier levels would make level sync’d content more fun for experienced players.

I don’t mean “give jobs their entire kits at level 50”. What I mean is more like “give jobs roughly what monk has now where it has its core rotational buttons and job gimmicks/gauges at level 50”.

Currently people with MMO experience get the free trial, play 40 hours, beat ARR and they have 5 buttons to press which have minimal interaction with each other. People new to the genre do largely the same thing except jobs gain core abilities or features very late so new players have less time to get used to using them like paladin not getting magic until the 60’s, SMN not getting ITG astral flow until 86, WHM not getting blood Lily until 74 etc.

This would be a fantastic change to see at the start of Dawntrail

[Cabalabob]

We’re seeing them move in this direction with things like the SMN rework. The problem being, the job is just not fun to play at all now instead of just at early levels.

[Remish]

We’re seeing them move in this direction with things like the SMN rework. The problem being, the job is just not fun to play at all now instead of just at early levels.

I love current SMN. If they make it any more complex, I probably won't play it anymore.

[Rithy255]

We’re seeing them move in this direction with things like the SMN rework. The problem being, the job is just not fun to play at all now instead of just at early levels.

If You look at Reaper and its hardly like what it is at 90. Same with GNB, DNC doesn't even get partner until 60? It's super inconsistent at best with new design. You could also include sage? but healers have the same rotation from all levels...

I think think Summoners a case of a class that it's a basic design, that all was needed was ability upgrades for the most part after a certain point, which results it feeling similar at all levels. Which yeah I don't want for every job, it's fine for *some* jobs to be easy but old summoner players that actually enjoyed the job were the ones getting a bad deal here, It's good to have some easier jobs, but they should always be new ones instead of just making every job easy for every player... Not all Jobs should be designed to be easy for everyone. I hope SE makes a fair balance of difficulty for more jobs in the future despite current trends.

[ChonkGoblinSuprem]

If You look at Reaper and its hardly like what it is at 90. Same with GNB, DNC doesn't even get partner until 60? It's super inconsistent at best with new design. You could also include sage? but healers have the same rotation from all levels...

I think think Summoners a case of a class that it's a basic design, that all was needed was ability upgrades for the most part after a certain point, which results it feeling similar at all levels. Which yeah I don't want for every job, it's fine for *some* jobs to be easy but old summoner players that actually enjoyed the job were the ones getting a bad deal here, It's good to have some easier jobs, but they should always be new ones instead of just making every job easy for every player... Not all Jobs should be designed to be easy for everyone. I hope SE makes a fair balance of difficulty for more jobs in the future despite current trends.

Do you even play this game? Dancer’s starting level is 60! Not even to mention that a healer’s “DPS rotation” is not how to consider a class whose primary job is healing, especially in lower level content like the dungeons in the Leveling Roulette.

[Renathras]

I love current SMN. If they make it any more complex, I probably won't play it anymore.

Agreed.

You could just not press the added buttons and you have the same. I really like SMN conceptually but I absolutely don't like how it plays. lol

Unless the buttons do absolutely nothing, this is never a valid rebuttal. For example, suppose there's a RDM that doesn't like melee. While, yes, you could tell them to just not ever use the melee buttons, that means they're basically griefing every party they got into for encounters without enrages by making encounters take far far FAR longer than they need to, and for anything with enrages, make it somewhat impossible for the other 7+ people in the party to clear.

That's not a valid response.

The two points that seem to always cause issues with learning are too many OGCDs, or the rotation shifting significantly after a specific point like how old BLM used to be. The other problem that they have is that they got to find ways to cram a lot of controls into a smaller package due to the way the game is built.

Agree with this, too. Pre-6.3 PLD was annoying to sync because muscle memory would have you go Royal combo after the magic phase (since Swords put a DoT on the enemy that didn't stack with Goring), but doing anything level 89 or lower - one level before max level - meant upending your muscle memory entirely. BLM was in a similar boat (and I guess still kinda is), and I remember having a friend that would not run anything not level cap on their BLM because it would screw with her muscle memory.

Jobs don't need to be TOTALLY complete by 50, but they shouldn't be actively countermanding your trained muscle memory you've spent hours/days/etc developing at level cap.

Right? Why on earth is Sheltron level 35 while Raw Intuition is 56 and HoS/TBN are 68/70?

To be fair, Shelltron isn't a good ability until 82 when it gains the heal. Raw Intuition has the heal from the jump and upgrades (twice?) to be even more healy. Shelltron is just flat DPS (and when it was put at level 35, was only block chance increase, not flat damage mitigation).

I think think Summoners a case of a class that it's a basic design, that all was needed was ability upgrades for the most part after a certain point, which results it feeling similar at all levels. Which yeah I don't want for every job, it's fine for *some* jobs to be easy but old summoner players that actually enjoyed the job were the ones getting a bad deal here, It's good to have some easier jobs, but they should always be new ones instead of just making every job easy for every player... Not all Jobs should be designed to be easy for everyone. I hope SE makes a fair balance of difficulty for more jobs in the future despite current trends.

As a long-time SMN player who really likes new SMN was was kind of meh on old SMN by ShB (I liked it in ARR and HW, but SB and ShB just got progressively more Frankenstein's monster), I do hope the new caster is good for you guys. Hoping for Green Mage DoT Mage since I know a lot of people did enjoy that. Though personally, I find new SMN feels a lot better to play, but everyone has their own preferences and I respect that.

I do 100% agree with you, though, that it's nice to have a mix of easier and hard Jobs in the game so everyone can kind of choose their own adventure/level they want to engage at. I'm not sure they should always be new ones - some old Jobs were easy before, so it makes sense for them to be so now (RDM used to be a bit easier, BRD used to be considered easier, WHM was always considered easy), etc. And I think some Jobs starting at level 1 being easy is a good idea since a player that wants an easier Job shouldn't have to level to 70/80/etc before unlocking it; some that start at level 1 (ideally one for each role) would be a better idea. And some people who want harder Jobs want a new one from time to time, so it would suck if all new Jobs were the easy ones.

But I do agree with you that it's bad to pull a Job out from under people - and this goes both ways. Making SMN easy or making WHM hard would upend the people that played them before in a lot of cases, and that's not really fair to the existing players. I hope they don't do any major reworks like THAT going forward, just because of how alienating it is.

/looks nervously at DRG and AST...

[fulminating]

We’re seeing them move in this direction with things like the SMN rework. The problem being, the job is just not fun to play at all now instead of just at early levels.

I don't think summoner was that bad even at early levels, I was enjoying doing the zodiac relic stuff on it before 6.0 and haven't been able to face it since the rework. Both dots, pet actions, fester and bane broke up the ruin spam enough to feel engaging, even if dwt/ruin4/that stupid demi weren't there.

[MsMisato]

I don't think summoner is a good example because they really didn't change anything level/dungeon wise for summoner skills. in fact they removed a handful of buttons like miasma, bane and removed what fester actually did which was designed to originally which was spread the dots around to group mobs, removed of the carbuncle/summon skills you had control over, and summons were used based on the situation you were in. mass pulls bust out garuda egi and the aoe attack. need melee attack call out ifrit. Tank messed up send in ifrit to keep the boss of others until tank can be raised. I kind of missed that. summoner was quite useful in lower-level dungeons just no one wanted to take time to understand how it worked.

[Darkobra]

I would absolutely love 50 to have something more. Dragoon was horrendous until around level 60. Black mage is basically pick fire or ice.

I think the best way to have done it would be to have you need to level to unlock the skills but then bring the skills down to that level's damage when you're doing lower level content.

[Payadopa]

I love current SMN. If they make it any more complex, I probably won't play it anymore.

You could just not press the added buttons and you have the same. I really like SMN conceptually but I absolutely don't like how it plays. lol