Picto makes the game less fun

[elioaiko]

They're not adding any job related to dot archetypes. Every job has had their dots pruned down to 1 or none. BRD is the only exception and even then, I feel like they're getting ready to give their dots the chop.

Considering the entire debacle that is the debuff and buff limit that crops up every now and then (recently T.O.P. Ultimate), they would need to finish that before proceeding with any addition of dots.

It's kind of baffling how they've never seemed to properly address or fix the issue–just reducing the amount of dots we have to coast by. At some point they're gonna have to actual fix it, especially since they're keen on making fights with debuff mechanics.

[Supersnow845]

They're not adding any job related to dot archetypes. Every job has had their dots pruned down to 1 or none. BRD is the only exception and even then, I feel like they're getting ready to give their dots the chop.

Considering the entire debacle that is the debuff and buff limit that crops up every now and then (recently T.O.P. Ultimate), they would need to finish that before proceeding with any addition of dots.

It's kind of baffling how they've never seemed to properly address or fix the issue–just reducing the amount of dots we have to coast by. At some point they're gonna have to actual fix it, especially since they're keen on making fights with debuff mechanics.

The debuff limit is basically only ever a problem in DRS/BA

The buff limit which came up in TOP has nothing to do with DOT’s and is entirely because they keep making every mechanic debuff vomit that places 5 debuffs on you when you have standard/espirit/kerechole/kerecha and all the other double buff clutter

[elioaiko]

The buff limit which came up in TOP has nothing to do with DOT’s and is entirely because they keep making every mechanic debuff vomit that places 5 debuffs on you when you have standard/espirit/kerechole/kerecha and all the other double buff clutter

Aren't DoTs considered debuffs?

And agreed on the debuff vomit. They have to find a better way to seperate catergories from the de/buff bar. It just looks so cluttered in general.

[Supersnow845]

Aren't DoTs considered debuffs?

And agreed on the debuff vomit. They have to find a better way to seperate catergories from the de/buff bar. It just looks so cluttered in general.

Dots are debuffs on the boss, the buff limit concerns the player, the debuff limit concerns the boss

You are never hitting the debuff limit in anything besides BA or DRS, the TOP problem was the buff limit which doesn’t affect dots

[Connor]

Doesn’t the entire ‘balancing around class difficulty’ idea fall apart when you realise class difficulty is almost entirely subjective?

Bard is by far the easiest class in the game for me. Well besides Scholar, but healers barely count as a real role anymore lol. And Summoner is like a whole other level of ‘easy’ nothing else can touch so not considering that either lol. Bard also one of the jobs I’ve played most frequently since 1.0, or I’d probably see the ‘difficulty’ completely differently. Personally I’d say Dancer is even harder because you’ve got so much ‘jank’ to deal with through Flourish transforming Standard Step into Finishing Move but not resetting the Step, meaning you have to either drift step’s cool-down or drift Finishing Move. Also Tilana overcapping can be a pain lol. To me Bard is literally just ‘doot doot press shining buttons here’s some giant potency attacks and a whole bunch of nothing in-between, you win’ lol

Naturally there are (few) exceptions to this such as Summoner being objectively on the extreme end of ‘easy’, but Black Mage (arguably) at the extreme end of ‘difficult’. But even then, whether or not Black Mage is truly ‘difficult’ is an entirely subjective thing; is it objective, or simply community perception?

Really the only thing that’s objectively true about ‘class difficulty’ in my opinion is that Summoner is the easiest by such a ridiculous degree that it’s practically scientifically proven at this point lol. But personally I think the whole ‘difficulty = strength’ idea the devs are going for is just a huge dead end they’re gonna have to walk back from eventually (or they’ll hit the wall lol)

[Lyth]

I think this quote nicely outlines the core problem in FFXIV's design philosophy:

'With the release of 7.0, however, we noticed that the DPS of the new job Pictomancer clearly stood out from the other classes. We could have nerfed Pictomancer before the raid, but since many people liked playing it so much, we decided to bring the DPS of the other classes into line with that of Pictomancer.'

Reactionary flat potency buffs can only solve so much. PCT's burst is probably the biggest problem from a balance perspective. BLM has to catch up to PCT between burst windows. If you add in downtime, the balance will always tip in favour of PCT.

The solution to balancing burst historically was making it resource-gated vs. timer-gated. You need to land hits to build resources. PCT ignores this by being able to charge motifs both outside combat as well as during downtime. Unless you change how motifs work, you'll never be able to balance PCT (more Crit/DH caps on high potency actions may be required as well).

They also went overboard on the utility as well, probably because they knew the job was going head to head with BLM. Five seconds of sprint on a 20s recast gap closer is just absurd (Aetherial Shift, which is the same effect without the sprint, is on 60s). Tempera Coat/Grassa likewise is surprisingly strong utility for a high damage caster. Even RDM's Magick Barrier is restricted to magical damage only. None of these are going to be rebalanced through upward potency buffs.

I think until SE changes that design philosophy, we're going to see some jobs being underpowered across entire expansions. Which is unfortunate, because the entire point of having so many jobs is to give players choice around playstyle.

[Ramiee]

I got a lot of hate for pointing this out on Reddit, but I just don't understand how a job losing some potency here and there would make playing it less fun. I'm pretty sure barely anyone besides people who like chasing numbers on the funny website would even notice the changes.

Nah it would look bad, they reworked Viper and then had to nerf Picto on an expansion where most people hated the story. This would be something to add to that, "CBU3 has fallen off Dawntrail's story is the worst and look they can't even design new jobs well!"
It would of had this effect for sure. I think DT is the first time in awhile when we had this many jobs getting miniature reworks straight after launch. EW had Kaiten and PLD rework, DT had BLM, MNK, VPR and SAM reworked and in SAMs and MNKs case they reworked it twice. If on top of all of that PCT got nerfed people would of called this out way earlier and heavier than they are now.

[Carighan]

It would of had this effect for sure. I think DT is the first time in awhile when we had this many jobs getting miniature reworks straight after launch. EW had Kaiten and PLD rework, DT had BLM, MNK, VPR and SAM reworked and in SAMs and MNKs case they reworked it twice. If on top of all of that PCT got nerfed people would of called this out way earlier and heavier than they are now.

It's interesting what passes for a "mini rework" in the relatively static context of FFXIV. I would call Astro losing their old cards a mini rework comparing other MMORPGs, and the only actual rework the game ever had was Summoner. As in, the class was essentialy hollowed out and some of the textual bits and visual f/x stitched together into something new.

But that only highlights how much too little they are willing to work on job designs, IMO. Stuff like this should be happening every .x-patch. Other games do that, they rip out entire mechanisms repeatedly, partiually because it's extremely difficult to design stuff in a vacuum. It's easier to change it, then change it back or do a third option when it doesn't work out!

[Ramiee]

It's interesting what passes for a "mini rework" in the relatively static context of FFXIV. I would call Astro losing their old cards a mini rework comparing other MMORPGs, and the only actual rework the game ever had was Summoner. As in, the class was essentialy hollowed out and some of the textual bits and visual f/x stitched together into something new.

What I personally constitute as a rework in XIV is removing a consistent feature from a job that's been around for a while. For example bard songs going from draining MP into CDs was a rework, AST cards no longer being RNG was a rework. When I say mini rework for SAM and MNK it was removing the timers on MNK and SAM's Tsubame-gaeshi changes. MNK/SAM in EW and DT play very similar so I wouldn't consider that a full rework. A rework would be like how monk from SHB to EW changed or if SAM had it's Iaijutsu system replaced with a different system.
I also disagree about SMN being the only job with a full rework, considering MCH in HW and SB play nothing like modern MCH. It's just the most egregious example because SMN went from high difficulty to no difficulty.