Can we talk about low-level job feel?

[HappyHubris]

Like most traditional MMOs, FFXIV trickles job abilities to the player as they level up, rewarding advancement with a more complete vision of how to engage in combat. As the level cap increases and classes are reworked, this often means that there are fewer core buttons to spread among a multitude of levels, causing large portions of the leveling experience to feel "thin" or incomplete. This is exacerbated by down-leveling characters participating in roulette content, meaning that a player might be thrown out of a well-functioning job several times a day.

To illustrate, let's look at a job that levels gracefully (BRD) versus one that levels terribly (PLD):

BRD is built around DoTs, songs, and procs. Already by 30 and your first step into the true job, you have one song, two DoTs, and multiple procs to look out for. At 50, you get enough songs to cover 75% of combat, multiple AoE attacks, and a party buff to deploy during burst windows. By 56, you have three songs and your DoT management button - your class vision is fully fleshed out. Between 56 and 90 you add a builder/spender gauge, an additional party buff, some utility, and traits that add interactions to your existing kit. The class gets tolerable quickly and becomes enjoyable before the end of the first expansion.

PLD is much more backloaded. You do get a gauge and spender by 35, but it's a 6 second mitigation spender. Mitigation that is superfluous for the vast majority of roulette content. Sheltron gets a nice upgrade at level 82 that improves its impact, which is almost at the end of the leveling curve. PLD doesn't get an offensive resource spender until 64, and the AoE spender is at 72. This means that the majority of the leveling curve involves a 1-2-3 single-target rotation or a 1-2 AoE rotation with 3 oGCDs per minute. No resource management. No fun buttons. Just 1-2-3 and oGCD. Why not move the damage spenders to 35/45 like warrior? Or otherwise shuffle more of the kit to come online between 1-60, with the rest being flavor and upgrades?

Other MMOs avoid this issue entirely. Guild Wars 2 allows you to keep your full kit when you downsync, simply downscaling your numbers to line up with the content. But if this breaks the game's vision too much, at least restructure the job design to be less painful at the low end. Because FFXIV pushes players to downlevel for several roulettes a day instead of sticking to current content. And it elicits a groan if you try this on the "wrong" job.

[Chrisie]

Self-rant about tanks. What I totally don't understand is how every rush action for every tank is placed on a different level. Like, why?! Why not just make it a role action, and so are ranged tanks attacks for pulling?

[Jeeqbit]

Actions coming at different levels on different jobs has always been a weird thing to me.

SE wants there to be a progression in what the job learns, so they don't just give you it all right away.

But SE has this idea that the job gained X ability in X expansion at X level and never revisits it. For example they are like "well WAR has Shake it Off and PLD has Divine Veil, so let's give DRK Dark Missionary in this new expansion". And they actually give it in that new expansion, not at the same level as the other jobs get it. Same with PLD getting a gap closer in EW while DRK and GNB have them at 54 and 56.

[Azureskies01]

Self-rant about tanks. What I totally don't understand is how every rush action for every tank is placed on a different level. Like, why?! Why not just make it a role action, and so are ranged tanks attacks for pulling?

Because they all came out at different times (darks first, warrior second, paladin way after that and gnb isn't a tank so f um) and not all tanks had one when they came out. They also probably want to make some class identity tied to when you get something like a charge.

[SomeGuy22]

Agreed, and I feel that the newer jobs/reworks have this issue at its worst. RPR feels incomplete till lvl 80, and under 70 it's barebones to the point of feeling at best like an ARR job at lvl 40. Hell, SMN only gets a noticeable shake-up to its rotation at a whopping lvl 86!

Sure you could argue that it happens in RPR's case because the job wasn't designed with older dungeons/raids in mind, but that should be a concern in a game with a roulette system. Dreading syncing down to over half of the game's content because of your job's kit shouldn't be such a common sentiment to find.

[vetch]

On the contrary, my experience is that PLD downsyncs better because low-level dungeons have more interesting tanking tasks (e.g.: you can use Shield Bash as a chain-stun to attempt some truly enormous pulls in ARR dungeons), whereas BRD downsyncs like crap because, as a DPS, it can only do DPS and BRD's level 50 kit, specifically, isn't fun. With PLD, the poor kit matters less because you can supplement it with a lot of content-specific optimizations that make use of the higher skill ceiling on early dungeons.

[HappyHubris]

On the contrary, my experience is that PLD downsyncs better because low-level dungeons have more interesting tanking tasks (e.g.: you can use Shield Bash as a chain-stun to attempt some truly enormous pulls in ARR dungeons), whereas BRD downsyncs like crap because, as a DPS, it can only do DPS and BRD's level 50 kit, specifically, isn't fun. With PLD, the poor kit matters less because you can supplement it with a lot of content-specific optimizations that make use of the higher skill ceiling on early dungeons.

Overpulling is only possible in certain areas, and Sheltron uptime doesn't meaningfully facilitate larger pulls. I guarantee you spend WAY more time on bosses and trivial pulls outputting damage than relying on an ounce of extra mitigation. You can argue with my lived experience all you want, but I'm going to disagree.

Even if you overpull on PLD, you're still spamming 1-2 and occasionally hitting an oGCD or Sheltron. I can fit monthly roulette deaths I see tanking on one hand, and none of them featured a sprout saying "6 seconds of 15% more mitigation would have saved this." All tanks can overpull, but PLD puts you to sleep more.

[vetch]

Overpulling is only possible in certain areas, and Sheltron uptime doesn't meaningfully facilitate larger pulls. I guarantee you spend WAY more time on bosses and trivial pulls outputting damage than relying on an ounce of extra mitigation. You can argue with my lived experience all you want, but I'm going to disagree.

Even if you overpull on PLD, you're still spamming 1-2 and occasionally hitting an oGCD or Sheltron. I can fit monthly roulette deaths I see tanking on one hand, and none of them featured a sprout saying "6 seconds of 15% more mitigation would have saved this." All tanks can overpull, but PLD puts you to sleep more.

I didn't mention Sheltron.

ARR dungeons are just more fun, partly because they offer all tanks more freedom to take risks to increase pace (almost all ARR dungeons have the opportunity to do repeated dangerous overpulls of the type you only see 3-4 times per expansion in ShB/EW), and partly because they're relics of an era where boss design wanted tanks to learn tank softskills like positioning and interrupts. This type of encounter design has a huge impact on the amount of fun available for tanks who are looking to explore their skill ceiling instead of just pushing 1-2 and an occasional oGCD.

And PLD specifically can trade its AoEs for 6-9 seconds of massive mitigation by tabbing through enemies and Shield Bashing them out of the fight completely. This allows you to do a lot more than just 'overpull', it allows you to do pulls that would make a Bloodwhetting WAR downright envious. And it's more interesting than 1-2-oGCD, because it calls for decision-making. It's like having a Holy-spamming white mage you can pull out of your pocket whenever you decide the tradeoff is worthwhile. (Decisions are one of those things that increase the amount of fun that content can offer.)

Meanwhile, BRD has fuck-all it can do to affect the flow of either trash pulls or boss fights, so it fully feels the holes in its kit.

[Jeeqbit]

Older dungeons are not so much fun from a rotation standpoint, but rather from the trinity actually mattering ie. if the healer doesn't heal, you actually die. Everything isn't overtelegraphed so you get to see a sprout die for their first time in the dungeon.

[HappyHubris]

I didn't mention Sheltron.

ARR dungeons are just more fun, partly because they offer all tanks more freedom to take risks to increase pace (almost all ARR dungeons have the opportunity to do repeated dangerous overpulls of the type you only see 3-4 times per expansion in ShB/EW), and partly because they're relics of an era where boss design wanted tanks to learn tank softskills like positioning and interrupts. This type of encounter design has a huge impact on the amount of fun available for tanks who are looking to explore their skill ceiling instead of just pushing 1-2 and an occasional oGCD.

And PLD specifically can trade its AoEs for 6-9 seconds of massive mitigation by tabbing through enemies and Shield Bashing them out of the fight completely. This allows you to do a lot more than just 'overpull', it allows you to do pulls that would make a Bloodwhetting WAR downright envious. And it's more interesting than 1-2-oGCD, because it calls for decision-making. It's like having a Holy-spamming white mage you can pull out of your pocket whenever you decide the tradeoff is worthwhile. (Decisions are one of those things that increase the amount of fun that content can offer.)

Meanwhile, BRD has fuck-all it can do to affect the flow of either trash pulls or boss fights, so it fully feels the holes in its kit.

We clearly respond to different parts of FFXIV mechanics.