Positionals

[Sjol]

It doesn't. Players just have a obsession to Optimize their own Fun away. Gotta optimize...

- Button Bloat, remove Job features
- Weaving issues, less APM
- Easier Movement, less Casts on new SMN
- Every shape slowly becomes a Circle AoE
- Positional Removal, True North can be deleted
- Remove margin for errors left-right-and-center
- Optimize Job balance, Screw your Fun
- Combo Compression and Auto Combo do it
- Remove Dots, its Archaic
- 2 min meta, everything lines up
- Gigantic Hitboxes, easier melee uptime
- Party buff radius increase, now you can't miss your Buffs
- Remove DPS variance, who cares about your random big numbers

There are reasons for a lot of these. Nuanced reasons, even that aren't really getting addressed.

Button bloat has to do with human ergonomics and the limits of what fits on a keyboard. MMO mice are not a solution for everyone. Nor are controllers. I have ready access to 16 buttons with a single modifier, leaving 32 for the keyboard, plus another 2+2 for the mouse, for a total of 36. Beyond that I'm hunting for the thing with a mouse. Thirty-six buttons ought to be enough for any job, but there are plenty that require more than that.

Here are some baseline numbers:

Tanks (7 role + 4 general)
PLD: 27 job, 38 total.

Melee DPS (6 role + 4 general)
NIN: 26 job, 36 total.

Ranged Magical (5 role + 4 general)
BLM: 26 job, 35 total.

I would love to see a hard cap of 32 buttons needed for any job just for the human ergonomics. If you can't create meaningful jobs with 32 buttons, I don't know what they're doing. PvP manages to do it with under 12, and BLU hard-limits you to 24 job buttons.

Moreover, I think that what the jobs need is more uniqueness and less reliance on role-abilities and standards. That fact that all tanks get the same 9 abilities causes way more feeling of homogeneity than anything else.

And lastly, as an aside, I think the main argument against DOTs is that SE's implementation of them is broken. Higher Cast SPD should make them tick faster or do more damage or something, but they don't. I like DOTs, but the implementation needs work.