The problem with Tripling Down on Shadowbringers Job Design

[Jeeqbit]

Yeah, it didn't sit very well with me knowing that they do have plans to revitalize job's identities but that'll probably be somewhere around 2026 with 8.0.

Me either. I don't know how they let that slip when trying to build excitement for THIS expansion. It also makes you wonder if they only just learned of this feedback that has been going around the community for years about job identity.

what's the point of AST and DRG rework?

AST needed something. DRG on the other hand didn't and they actually said it isn't changing much like they previously suggested it would.

2026? That's highly optimistic, I would say it will take them until 2028. Dawntrail's mid 2024, they usually don't count release year as that expansion's year. 2025 will be the first year, 2026 and 27 are filler years, with 2028 release.

It used to take about 2 years. Endwalker changed things by extending the expansion lull to 8 months. Dawntrail has continued this, which makes it a trend now.

Endwalker released on December 7th, 2021 and Dawntrail releases on July 2nd, 2024. Based on that, we could assume 8.0 will release on December 10th, 2026 (which will be a consistent 2 and a half years).

If they try really hard to make it like other expansions and reduce the patch lull from 8-9 months to 5 like in the past, then they might manage July, but so far things have only got longer.

[Raikai]

Me either. I don't know how they let that slip when trying to build excitement for THIS expansion. It also makes you wonder if they only just learned of this feedback that has been going around the community for years about job identity.

I've heard the idea that realistically Endwalker feedback on the base structure elements (eg job gameplay, encounter design) of the game would only be taken in works for 8.0 since when a xpac is out they're already working on the next one. I'm not sure if this is really true on the practical sense of the production cycle, because Endwalker issues were fully evident as far as we got into the first raid tier. Isn't there like, still a lot of time to change plans around?

But if that's really true, what we're getting on DT about encounter design is a reflection of Shadowbringer's feedback.

AST needed something. DRG on the other hand didn't and they actually said it isn't changing much like they previously suggested it would.

Right, but they could address AST's issues with minor fixes, such as reducing Draw to 1 charge or even making it a GCD with Play an oGCD, giving a different effect to Lord/Lady and changing Astrodyne's damage buff to be the 1-seal bonus. I'm not terribly mad at it, but I feel that removing the RNG altogether was overkill, they just needed to look at Astrodyne.

[Jeeqbit]

when a xpac is out they're already working on the next one.

In all my experience playing this game for 9 years, I will say this:

1. They tend to say they are "thinking" about the next expansion in the first patch.
2. They continue to let the ideas grow, slowly discussing them and molding them into something.
3. As they begin work on the third patch, it becomes integral to have a plan for the next few patches which "build up" to the next expansion (well, except for Endwalker which did that all in half a patch). Once the third patch is done, they switch their focus to the new expansion and start actually developing it (concept art, areas, music, trailers, etc).
4. Around the fourth patch we get a fan fest that reveals the first trailer, mostly concept art, and some stuff they've actually finished, a rough plot of what we're doing.
5. Develops from there, as they update us on the progress at each fan fest into the fifth patch and onwards. In the final stretch, after the areas are done they rush through implementing all the quests and frantically localizing them all.

This is what I've gathered from following it for years. My impression is it's all ideas up until the .3 patch, then they start developing it. So your feedback is useful up until the .3 patch, it might be after that patch but as time goes on, it gets increasingly unlikely to implement it because they've already decided things.

[Valence]

Complex is not the greatest word I'd use. Some people would probably love insanely difficult job kits but I doubt that's the whole point. It's more about fun channeled through elaborate designs, intricacies etc. There is a reason people regularly bring up pvp toolkits as they do exactly just that with 4 times less buttons. Every ability synergizes with the others and works within a coherent entity focused around a specific purpose and mechanic. It gratifies with rewards in effectiveness when pulled properly.

Any job would work, but if you take DRK for instance, the whole point is about spending HP to unleash potent attacks, and balancing your tanking with your spending of HP. Some abilities like Sole Survivor can snowball as when you kill someone with it, you regain HP and MP and reset plunge/survivor, which allows you to kill more people. The LB also makes you self heal from damage done which further compounds the spending of HP and recuperating it before the end of the timer. It's a perfect example of a virtuous circle that rewards you with more as long as you keep the loop going. RPR generates harvest stacks by spending their main gcd spender and killing people, and those stacks are consumed like in pve to boost the damage of plentiful harvest. The more you kill people, the most powerful your harvest can be for its use every minute. Using harvest also makes you LB replenish way faster so you need to know when to use it and when to hold it. The whole point of RDM is knowing when to shift between white and black stances, one being defensive/curative and the other for pure damage. Being able to swap at will can even allow people to make combinations in the middle of combos to adjust and transform the effects of their skills at a whim. And so on. Every job is designed with a clear and specific purpose in mind, unlike pve. And what does pvp also have? Resource scarcity and management, notably MP.

A whole pvp toolkit is usually encapsulated into 7-8 buttons, and 4 more universal actions. Many abilities have multiple effects coming attached to them and they tend to synergize with others from other skills. Is this complex? Somewhat but that's not exactly the word I'd use to describe such a simple system with so little buttons. Intricate or elaborate, yes. Or maybe, just focused on rewarding good uses. Current pve rewards people with a big shiny button every 2 minute with follow up finishers that you get when pressing a button, that's about it. Next you have skills filling up gauges and some gauge spenders to spend the time and that's pretty much it.

Fun doesn't need to come necessarily from complicated systems, but giving rewards for using your toolkit well when presented by various situations also means that skill gaps are gonna appear again, and they obviously don't want that.

[AmiableApkallu]

*snip*

Fun doesn't need to come necessarily from complicated systems, but giving rewards for using your toolkit well when presented by various situations also means that skill gaps are gonna appear again, and they obviously don't want that.

PvP kits also exist in the context of highly dynamic, unscripted, unpredictable encounters.

"Using your toolkit well" in PvE will never mean or feel like the same thing, regardless of what PvE kits look like, so long as PvE encounters are the polar opposite.

[MagiusNecros]

PvP kits also exist in the context of highly dynamic, unscripted, unpredictable encounters.

More of that stuff in PvE pls. All for that no dungeon/boss run is the same experience. Because dynamic gameplay is exactly what people are looking for in this game.

[Valence]

Hard disagree even if the environments are obviously different. A lot of the pvp abilities and ideas behind them could work perfectly well in pve with some adjustment, because they literally start with a clear core concept and everything is designed around it, unlike for pve that just uses generic concepts like combo patterns, 2min burst finishers or models shared between every class in the game.

We used to have some rewarding virtuous loops in pve too, like for bard old repertoire based on dots, DRK's old sole survivor, mch designed entirely around heat management and overheat all feeding into a gigantic burst, etc. We had variation and flavor, and purpose of design.

[Mikey_R]

Hard disagree even if the environments are obviously different. A lot of the pvp abilities and ideas behind them could work perfectly well in pve with some adjustment, because they literally start with a clear core concept and everything is designed around it, unlike for pve that just uses generic concepts like combo patterns, 2min burst finishers or models shared between every class in the game.

Could you provide an example of how you would adapt a PvP kit for use in PvE?

[Valence]

Could you provide an example of how you would adapt a PvP kit for use in PvE?

For MCH for example, a lot of the crowd control can be adjusted into pve friendly debuffs that do similar but different things.

1) The multitool gets into a rotative cycle like in pvp, where you go through Drill > Bioblaster > Anchor > Chainsaw on a 60s cycle. You have 2 charges of it per minute for example.
Reassemble (2 charges) becomes used like Analysis in pvp and changes or adds additional effects to the tool it is used on. Maybe on a 40s recharge so you get 2 charges every 120s, and 1 additional charge for a smaller burst every odd minute.
- Basic Drill is just a big potency tool single hit like today. Rea Drill gets doubled potency or CDHit like today in pve (single target).
- Basic Bioblaster is the same AoE dot than today. Rea Bioblaster gets a slow debuff of 5% or 10% of 10-15s duration on every target hit (useful for AoE and dungeons)
- Basic Anchor is still a battery generator like today. Rea Anchor paints the target and triggers bishop's additional effects (raid buffs)
- Basic Chainsaw is a normal line AoE like today, doesnt generate battery. Rea Chainsaw gets an execute effect doubling its AoE potency, or just removing the AoE falloff on every target hit that is below 25 or 50% HP (whatever works best for balance/feeling), could also add a bleed effect (AoE).

2) The filler is split shot, slug shot, clean shot into the finisher (long cast time, slow walk) blast charge. Since here we have gauges, we can keep freedom into when we want to overheat with hypercharge unlike pvp where it instantly overheat at 5 blast charge stacks without input.
- No battery gains
- Heat gains to be adjusted depending on the amount of combos expected per minute.

3) The job keeps its pve gauges and still uses hypercharge as it can be used today, same for barrel stab. It gets the additional pvp effect of increased movement speed +25% during overheat (overheat being the additional buff). We can also imagine overheat bringing back the old 20% damage buff if we want to use other things than just heat blast inside.
- Optional but not related to pvp: turn ricochet into a proc of gauss round, else those two skills are completely redundant and uninteresting right now. Alternative: HB resets only gauss round, while Auto CB does on ricochet.
- Using Hypercharge dumps heat into battery generation

4) Battery can be spent on different automatons:
- 50 battery required for queen, it always consumes 50, potency stays fixed. 60s cooldown to prevent conflicting with bishop. Would be tempted to add more manual interactions with queen to make it less zzzz, but that's beyond the scope of this.
- 50 battery required for bishop autoturret, is AoE potency pulsing autos. Generates a shield that pulses and gives small barriers to the party during its (short) duration. Targets hit are afflicted by a vuln debuff. Bishop can be stacked with queen.

5) Additional weapons:
- Scattergun deals damage like in pvp, either a big double hit on single target, or a single hit on multiple targets and if multiple targets are hit, reduces the cooldown of the next Rea by 5-10s per target hit. It can count double into Wildfire as well if used at the end.
- Flamethrower is an AoE tool that deals more damage to slowed enemies (synergy with Rea Bio or just other sources of slow like arm's length). Also generates battery (1 battery per target hit per second for example, not worth it in single target).

6) WF stays like it is in pve/pvp, with the pvp twist that the last hit registered (in pvp it's 3, can be more here depending on what we want) immediately triggers detonation for better control.
- Idea of burst: Queen summon, Rea Drill, Turret summon and Rea Anchor for buffs, WF/hypercharge -> hypercharge ends -> scattergun to finish on WF last trigger. Opener would have no battery and I'm okay with this, but not opposed to barrel stab also giving battery, or maybe you actually just start with full battery gauge and zero heat.
- I hesitated to make WF fully like in pvp where it's a short cd similar to scattergun, and that you ideally combine with scatter but that sounds like too wild of a departure from pve and raid buffs/bursts.

7) 2500 MP used for second wind. You can use it as many times as you want until out of MP. Can be replicated for all jobs having second wind tbh, would make some use of MP back to the menu.

8) 120s cooldown sniper rifle, could be tied to heat, or something else? idk


Edit: I would see this bring a lot more choices to make centered around the multitool, unlike today where it's just fire and forget.

[Mikey_R]

For MCH for example, a lot of the crowd control can be adjusted into pve friendly debuffs that do similar but different things.

It's worth noting right off the bat there is a contradiction in your list. You initially stated that the tools would rotate like in PvP, so it starts Drill, on use it turns into Bio Blaster, which turns into Air Anchor then into Chainsaw before going back to drill, however, in point 6 where you give an 'ideal' burst, you start with Drill, oGCDs, then Air Anchor. By my reasoning, that cannot happen. Either that or there is something I am missing.

As to the thing as a whole, you have basically made PvE MCH with the following changes (for ST):
1. 4 step combo with no Battery Generation.
2. Hypercharge generates Battery, presumably to replace the Battery lost from the combo.
3. Rather than alternating Gauss Round and Ricochet, you mainly just use Gauss Round, though I assume Ricochet is still used, it just won't have its cooldown shortened by Heat Blast.
4. Scattergun is now a high potency attack with 50% damage fall off (and a ridiculously strong effect of reducing Reassembles cooldown per enemy hit). I will also assume it has a cooldown since we are basing this off of the PvP kit and you didn't mention otherwise.
5. 2 Turrets, one to debuff the enemy and one to do damage.

I will assume you flubbed the opener when referring to tools and so will assume they work like PvP, with a 15 second cooldown (as you said you can do 1 full rotation a minute) with 2 charges. With Air Anchor being as crucial to burst as it is, I don't see it lining up without having to hold charges and wasting the cooldown. As for the comment on choices to make with the tool. If it is like PvP, you have no choice, you rotate through them getting to the one that gives the most damage when you need it (reassembled Air Anchor in Burst). if they are separate, then you have 2 for AoE and 2 for ST, unless those AoE tools have potencies which allow them to be used in ST, in which case, I now have 4 tools fighting foe the same spot, Air Anchor is Burst starter, Assuming Drill is highest potency, what use do the other 2 have?

As for the Sniper Rifle, a 2 minute cooldown attack, thought people hated those? Even if you wanted to tie it to a resource, it is still a 2 minute cooldown.

Now, regardless of all that. This whole thing was started as an exercise to adapt the PvP kit into a PvE environment. So, what makes your kit more suited to that environment compared to the current PvE set? Why is yours better?

An RDM example (it's going to be wild):

You will be in Black Shift 99% of the time, unless you need movement, making the whole mechanic seem almost pointless. Remember, damage is the aim. In parties, you have healers do do the healing and mitigating (along with Tanks), so that extra 'utility' in White Shift is pointless. In solo play, it might be more interesting, having to balance out White and Black in order to properly keep yourself alive.