The slow death of proc based jobs

[Valence]

I was gonna write an essay on this, but this should be obvious on its own by this point. The amount, or at least the ratio of jobs designed around procs is plummeting to the ground, and steadily so. I cannot know what they have planned for Dawntrail though, but seeing the pattern so far, let's just say I'm not having much hope.

Quick disclaimer: I do not consider "proc based" an ability that you activate from rotational mechanics (like DRG eyes, etc), and lights up after you do a specific sequence. Proc based in this post refers to rng based procs that light up and are NOT guaranteed.


So far the game only has one single full proc job, which is BRD. Full proc means that you don't have any base combo or facsimile of base combo, and BRD indeed doesn't have a guaranteed base combo. The second step (Refulgent) is chance based. Repertoire OGCDs abilities are also on a chance based and therefore (even if extremely predictable, which is appreciable but also boring), much like Refulgent, are standard procs in all the meaning of the word.

DNC, RDM are the remaining proc rng based jobs, but they're not full proc based, far from it. DNC has a baseline guaranteed 2 steps combo, from which procs are generated randomly, and unlike BRD and countrary to popular belief, DNC is less proc based even though it has GCD and oGCD procs. RDM follows a simulacrum of baseline 2 step combo, which is not a true combo by the fact that it has the dualcast mechanic behind, but in essence, you cast Jolt into Thunder/Aero, so in essence, it's a branching combo. You can proc Fire/Stone to replace Jolt, which is where the proc part of the job comes up, but it doesn't replace the baseline combo action. RDM however doesn't have proc based oGCD actions.

MCH used to be a full proc based job before its rework, since no step of the basic combo, like BRD, was guaranteed. One could say that ammo could help guarantee procs (much like Acceleration on RDM), so I could grant you that perhaps it was only 80% proc based idk. Either way, they removed the procs from that job for some reason. MCH didn't have proc based oGCD abilities though.

All in all, we now have a full proc base job (BRD), a 75% proc based job (DNC), and a 25% proc based job (RDM), and used to have a 75% proc based job (MCH).

Special mention to BLM that has procs, but they have been smoothed out of the rotational loop over time and thundercloud is the only one that still somewhat matters, but doesn't make the job really feel proc based much, but I had to account for it.

So while they remove proc based designs from ranged job and introduce basic combos into it (MCH), no melee whatsoever holds any proc design, and they keep introducing more of those, all based on positionals and basic or branching combos (branching combos also slowly dying over time, but that's another story). As a result, it means the amount of jobs keeps going up, while the amount of proc jobs is going down, or stagnating, resulting in a plummeting ratio.

On top of it, no support job whatsoever has proc designs, and all tanks follow a similar basic combo pattern while healers spamm one button. AST has rng in cards (which is nice), but it's not procs, with perhaps the niche mention of The Lord arcana, I guess. Worth noting even if it was very niche, DRK used to have actual procs with Dark Dance and Dark Passenger iirc (in Heavensward).

My question to the devs, if they even read this, is: do you plan to add more rng proc based jobs back at some point to the game? Or is this destined to be another dying model or confined to a couple of jobs like BRD and DNC?

On another note, I want to emphasize that the 50% (or lower) model is way more interesting than 80% + proc rates that proc all the time, provided you have enough different abilities to juggle with so that you don't die of boredom waiting for your ONE proc to... proc. But that's nitpicking anyway. I'm not gonna be picky as long as I have procs, and I must admit that I'm bored of constantly gravitating around the same 2 jobs because that's what I like, and I dislike combos. I'm slowly getting burned out of pve (vs pvp that is much more interesting in terms of flavor, uniqueness and toolkits), and perhaps it has to do with me being way too picky, so maybe it's a me problem idk.

[Renathras]

I feel like there are a lot of proc Jobs, just some do it in different ways.

MNK is another proc based Job, it's just a proc gauge. You get Chacka randomly from crits, so where in your rotation you use the Kamehameha changes from encounter to encounter. DNC is very very proc based in its rotation, and there's every little chance it will play the same every time. RDM is much less so since normalization, proc manipulation with EW Acceleration, and guaranteed Holy/Flare procs, but it still alters the gameplay.

While less random, MCH and WAR both have abilities that change the CD of other abilities (Heat Blast for MCH shortening the CDs of Rocochet and Gauss Round; Feel Cleave for WAR reducing the CD on Infuriate). While not strictly a proc, it does move things from what they'd be statically.

And BLM with Thundercloud is there, though it can be finagled with Sharpcast.

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I get you mentioned these, I'm just reiterating for completeness' sake. And I did feel like pointing out MNK in particular since you did not; MNK's rotation in general is also a bit more randomized than most due to when you enter the Nadi generating bit being somewhat random based on where you were in your rotation. PLD has a similar situation, but it's considerably less intense and interactive.

Not everyone likes procs, so having too many proc Jobs is bad, but some people do, so it's a pretty good idea to have at least some. Though the one problem with "full proc" is that it can swing WILDLY from encounter to encounter, making balance insane. One reason RDM got Accelerate was as RNG "insurance" because people would sometimes get bad RNG and have a poor showing in that fight through no fault of their own. While some people love that high risk-reward feel, others do not, and it tends to make Jobs less desired in content.

And while I think having some proc based Jobs is good, I also think they should be more spread out. It shouldn't be 3 Ranged and a Caster. It should be more like 1 Melee, 1 Ranged, 1 Caster, 1 Tank, 1 Healer or something like that. Have an option in each role instead of a monopoly on one role and no presence anywhere else.

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Also, what your describing has some overlap as I'm not sure if you mean "proc based" or "priority system", since "don't have any base combo" is usually a priority system. BRD is a priority system as there's no base combo or rotation, you simply use things on a priority list of highest to lowest. Procs will randomly add to that list, but are still on it. RDM is likewise a priority system. RDM has no set rotation and no base combo. Dualcast isn't a combo. Jolt-Aero, Jolt-Thunder, Fire-Aero, Fire-Thunder, Stone-Aero, Stone-Thunder are not in a rotation. It's a priority system. "Do you have a Stone/Fire ready proc? If so, use that, if not, use Jolt, if you have both, use Fire or Stone, whichever you have the LEAST mana of, and if you have equal mana of both, whichever you like the animation of best; Now you have a Dualcast proc, is someone in the party KO? Use Verraise. If not, do you have a Stone/Fire ready proc? If so, use the opposite element (Thunder if you have Stone ready, Aero if you have Fire ready), if not, use the one you have the least mana of, if they're equal, use the one you like the animation of best;..."

RDM is 100% a priority system and has no base combo. The only guarantees you have are that any hardcast spell will generate a Dualcast, that Acceleration used on Thunder/Aero will generate a Fire/Stone proc, that your spells generate their tooltip listed amount of Black/White Mana, and that using Manification will give you 50/50 mana. Everything else is a priority system, based on what your current mana values are, what your current status of Stone/Fire procs is (or isn't), if the encounter requires movement or not, if the party needs a raise or not, and if you have enough stuff for a melee combo and the encounter is safe to engage in your melee combo or not, and if you can optimize that into bursts.

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I'm not trying to nitpick, just trying to make sure I understand what you're asking for, but it sounds to me like you want a priority based non-rotation, but also one that isn't like RDM where it's based on things you have, but rather is entirely based on RNG chance as to which buttons are even up to press, with just the one "fallback" button for when nothing is up?

[Lyth]

I think the community mindset on this filters down from speedrunning. If players aren't even willing to tolerate dice rolls on critical hits because they ruin their 'perfect run', how well do you think RNG procs go down?

I really enjoy RNG-based procs, personally, especially if you give players situational tools to help fish for those procs. Heavensward's DRK was a great example of this. But the playerbase needs a different mindset if we want to see these back.

[Valence]

MNK is another proc based Job, it's just a proc gauge. You get Chacka randomly from crits, so where in your rotation you use the Kamehameha changes from encounter to encounter.

That's fair, it has rng proc elements on one ogcd. It doesn't define the core job rotation, but it's there and makes weaving a bit more random.

While less random, MCH and WAR both have abilities that change the CD of other abilities (Heat Blast for MCH shortening the CDs of Rocochet and Gauss Round; Feel Cleave for WAR reducing the CD on Infuriate). While not strictly a proc, it does move things from what they'd be statically.

See my disclaimer and why I don't consider them rng procs at all. They're predefined and will always amount to the same ratios and happenstances unless the player screws up. Pushing a button to make another light up, or see its recast reduced, is not a rng proc.

MNK's rotation in general is also a bit more randomized than most due to when you enter the Nadi generating bit being somewhat random based on where you were in your rotation. PLD has a similar situation, but it's considerably less intense and interactive.

There is literally zero rng in MNK's and PLD gcd rotations.

Though the one problem with "full proc" is that it can swing WILDLY from encounter to encounter, making balance insane. One reason RDM got Accelerate was as RNG "insurance" because people would sometimes get bad RNG and have a poor showing in that fight through no fault of their own. While some people love that high risk-reward feel, others do not, and it tends to make Jobs less desired in content.

I doubt this is the actual reason behind RDM stealing old MCH ammo (because it wasn't the reason behind MCH ammo in the first place). The reason is that it makes it feel very crappy and like a sludge when you get under a long bad streak, esp on mechanics like RDM or during HW Mildfires. But overall, people massively overplay the swing effect of such rng mechanics due to the variance they introduce not being "worse" than the crit variance for instance. In fact, the crit variance, especially on big nukes (800+ potency moves, which WAS the reason behind the kaiten removal btw), is way more impactful and a lot less easy to counteract by a rule of averages among a way bigger sample, from which most rng proc based abilities benefit.

I'm not trying to nitpick, just trying to make sure I understand what you're asking for, but it sounds to me like you want a priority based non-rotation, but also one that isn't like RDM where it's based on things you have, but rather is entirely based on RNG chance as to which buttons are even up to press, with just the one "fallback" button for when nothing is up?

No, I'm just asking what SE's plans are when it comes to true proc based jobs, I don't get where you assumed I was talking about priority job models. See my disclaimer again.

While I acknowledge that some jobs have a handful of rng proc based elements to their design, I still argue that they do NOT feel like rng proc jobs. RDM is an edge case I could concede, but overall you're stuck with BRD/DNC.

[Renathras]

I doubt this is the actual reason behind RDM stealing old MCH ammo (because it wasn't the reason behind MCH ammo in the first place).

My personal guess? That because so much damage comes from the 2 min meta, you don't want "bad luck" during the 2 min burst. Acceleration was added (in ShB) to ensure RDM's opener worked. The EW change to Acceleration was for the sake of both opener and burst. It's one thing to have "dry" periods, but it's another to have "dry" periods during the burst phases where the party is taking off 10-20% of the boss's health bar. It's 100% RNG insurance, and if the Job has a consistent performance in burst windows, that's the majority of the damage done in the encounter. So for proc Jobs like RDM, they are given RNG insurance that will be up for burst so that at least THAT PART of their rotation/encounter, they can be assumed to be doing a pretty consistent amount of damage.

No, I'm just asking what SE's plans are when it comes to true proc based jobs, I don't get where you assumed I was talking about priority job models. See my disclaimer again.

While I acknowledge that some jobs have a handful of rng proc based elements to their design, I still argue that they do NOT feel like rng proc jobs. RDM is an edge case I could concede, but overall you're stuck with BRD/DNC.

I think it's probably in how a person feels about things.

Proc systems are always going to be priority systems more or less by default, I think. Otherwise the procs don't fit in anywhere/aren't relevant. When the proc happens, it has high priority. If it had lowest priority, it wouldn't matter if you had a proc or not.

I guess it comes down to what one considers true RNG. For example, RDM procs are generally not guaranteed (the only ones that are are Acceleration and Holy/Flare if mana imbalanced), the general ones you get through your rotation are entirely random coin flips. So are non-Sharpcloud Thundercloud procs. Technically so are things like Freecure...not that those are relevant or rotational.

[Valence]

Of course rng procs are priority based. But priority jobs don't necessarily imply rng procs.

Squares and Rectangles.

[Mikey_R]

All jobs are priority based in one way or another. The thing the changes is how the priority list shifts throughout the fight. For more rigid jobs, like Dragoon, the priority list doesn't change, however, something like Bard, where you have a chance to proc Refulgent Arrow, your list of priorities can change at a moments notice.

So, I would say it isn't necessarily RNG procs that you are lacking, it is the fact there is no job that fills that constant updating of your priority list that can keep up with you. This is evidenced by the fact you enjoy PvP. As far as I am aware, there is no proc based RNG in any kit, infact, the only RNG I know of is on AST and Draw, otherwise, what a job can do is fixed and you know exactly what is going to happen.

However, the difference here is that, since you are fighting other people, not only on your own team but the enemy as well, your thought process on what to do next is constantly changing, especially when you are engaged in combat. You might have the plan of going in and doing your combo, until that WHM you missed stunned you with their LB, or imped you, forcing you to rethink what you want to do and the options available to you. It is this constant updating, processing then acting on the information that you feel is missing from PVE.

[Raikai]

The most egregious bad proc example for me is BLM's Thundercloud. It's a mechanic that is nearly obsolete with how Sharpcast changed and with how the Thundercloud buff lasts longer now. Idk, is just so bad to see the rng procs scrolling up but in fact you can't really use them or else you might compromise your T3 refreshes.

Maybe a way to address this would be just changing Sharpcast's effect to cause the next T3 fire off as it had Thundercloud, this way we would be able to actually make use of the procs more consistently. But honestly, I'd just overhaul the whole Sharpcast + T3 mechanic to make it a bit less mindless.

[Valence]

I did a little quick ratio. Finer details can always be discussed, but it's hard to argue against that general pattern:

COMBO JOBS
- PLD, WAR, GNB, DRK, SAM, NIN, DRG, RPR, MCH

BRANCHING COMBOS (rest have no branches)
- WAR (lol), NIN (lol), DRG

TRUE PROCS
- BRD, DNC, RDM

FREEFORM/OTHERS
- SMN, BLM, MNK (+BLU)

1 BUTTON HEALERS
- 4 healers

All combo jobs together account for 47% of all jobs. Branching ones account for 33% of the latter, so 15% of all jobs, which is the same ratio than proc jobs (15%). Worse, if you want to play tank, you have to literally deal with combos.
Healers account for 21%.

[Renathras]

Nice, I like this kind of discussion.

So 47% of Jobs are combo based, 21% are healers (go figure), so 68% total. The other 32% (1/3rd) are either proc based (1/6th) or freeform/other (1/6th).

Combos should probably be broken into "limited" vs "expanded" as SAM and DRG have rather...different...combo sets than NIN or MCH, etc. That said, not every one is created equal. MCH has a 1-2-3 combo, but a lot of non-combo GCDs that are worked into the rotation aside from the filler. Contrast NIN, where most of its non-filler gameplay is oGCD, not GCD, based, or Tanks like WAR where the majority (I think?) of its actions are spent on its 1-2-3/-4 button presses. Also, PLD's combo sort of branches, it just does so in a different way. You can order the branch any way you want, so to speak. GNB also has special mention since it has an entirely separate combo, though whether you want to chalk that up to "just burst" or not...granted, so do PLD and WAR, but their alternates are just the same button several times (GNB's has a bit more nuance than that...)

In any case, that sounds about right. 1/6 proc, 1/6 freeform, 1/5th healers, a bit less than half combos. Though we'd have to do a survey of players to see what people actually like to see if this matches that percent or not. That is, do the majority of players WANT to play proc based Jobs? Then they're underserved. But if it's only around 1/6th, then they are well served. The issue is more like I said about options across roles.

Right now, for example, there's a simple/straightforward option in each role (WAR, WHM, and SMN). That's not a bad thing, as it means people that like that sort of gameplay have options in each role. Note the proc Jobs are all DPS, two of those are Ranged Phys, and all three are heavy support kits (even RDM). Not only are the options for support DPS all taken so people who don't like procs don't have one, people who do like procs but want to do literally anything else don't have an option.

So it's less we need more proc Jobs and more we need the proc Jobs across more roles. Maybe DRK's inevitable rework could be to be proc based to get it out of WAR's shadow, for example, and AST being proc based would...make sense given the fortune/fate element of the Job.