Genuine Question about Job Homogeneity

[Mikey_R]

I like that many posts here in this thread oversimplify job comparisons to make them look more similar than they actually are.

Viper is just 123? What? No it isn't. Yes, they are 3 step combos, put onto 2 buttons, that change as you go through, with a mandatory oGCD you have to hit or you lose it. Each one also has separate buffs that dictate the flow of how you go through them. MCH is a straight 123, each hit increases heat and get battery on the last hit. I would hardly call them the same.

PLD and GNB being similar? No. PLD's burst is the same for the most part, but the last 2-3 hits are dependant on where you are in your combo. GNB on the other hand, every even window, you enter with no cartridges, every odd window, you enter with full cartridges. This changes how you approach the burst phases before you even get into them.

Gap closers not available to melee jobs? All melee DPS have always had access to a gap closer. The only discrepancy was with tanks, with DRK having the first one, then WAR getting one in the next expansion then PLD the one after. However, in SB PLD did have access to a stronger ranged attack, which is likely why they didn't add one for PLD.

Gauges, I've seen this a lot. Just build and spend. Ok, name a gauge that isn't. Oh, Old SAM had some thought because Guren cost 50 Gauge and Shinten cost 25? You are still just building and spending, so I'm not seeing the benefit. You need to think about gauge building and spending to make sure you don't overcap whilst keeping enough for burst? So, you have given yourself an artificial floor, ideally, don't go below this and most of the time you will be fine.

I hope people see the irony in what I'm trying to portray there. I guarantee that if anyone makes a suggestion to make gauges 'more interesting', and I were to come back with, 'but, it is still just building and spending', people would likely get annoyed, I would say, rightly so as well. I'm taking all the nuance out of the system and oversimplifying it, to make everything sound the same. That sound very similar to the though process that people use to say all jobs play the same. Curious that.


EDIT:
It should be noted that I do feel the 2 minute meta has not been beneficial to job design. But not because every job has a 60 second and a 2 minute, but because it pushes out certain damage profiles, like more sustained DPS jobs. Monk, Summoner, Paladin, all more sustain orientated jobs in the past, but the 2 minute burst meta has necessarily forced them to fit the mould. In an ideal world, I would have jobs be more flexible, as an example, imagine Viper, but ignore the 2 minute meta. In theory, you could easily Reawaken whenever you wanted at no damage loss. The buffs are going to last though them no problem. However, what if the boss had a burst phase coming up. You could save it to help with that section. It might be that your group decides DPS 1 and 2 burst in this phase, whilst 3 and 4 hold it for after or use it before, to help with the overall fight DPS. A system like this, I think, would be better for the game and, since there are no strict burst phases every 2 minutes, your fights can be less rigid.

[Jeeqbit]

PLD and GNB being similar? No. PLD's burst is the same for the most part, but the last 2-3 hits are dependant on where you are in your combo.

Seems like stretching here. My hotbars for the two are setup the same and there is barely a difference aside from GNB being more oGCD centric due to Continuation, and the Atonement combo on PLD.

What is unique for PLD is that much of its core rotation can be done at range, it can heal people indefinitely with Clemency and it's always had a lot of utility like Cover.

What I will give you is that tanks have always been pretty homogenized since the start, so I think people are just thinking of the little nuances like WAR having a cone AoE, DRK having to "unlock" certain abilities with Dark Dance and having to "empower" certain abilities to give them different effects and having "keep up" meters with MP mattering, more unique animations (many of the role actions used to be unique to DRK or PLD) and separate combos that had a purpose (applying magic damage downs, physical damage downs, or damage vulnerabilities) as opposed to everyone just having Reprisal.

Same with healers really. They were always homogenized with a Cure, Cure II, Area regen, Area heal, Esuna, Rez. So they're just referring to whatever unique things they had like number of attacks, how AST cards worked, SCH's pets or Cleric Stance. But also it's just pretty true that SGE mostly cloned SCH with the main nuance being that attack heals replace pet heals and regens.

Gap closers not available to melee jobs? All melee DPS have always had access to a gap closer. The only discrepancy was with tanks

Exactly. Tanks are melee jobs. And they started adding them to ranged jobs over time, with WHM being one of the latest to get one.

[VeyaAkemi]

Exactly. Tanks are melee jobs. And they started adding them to ranged jobs over time, with WHM being one of the latest to get one.

I feel there is a large functional difference between a *movement ability* and a *gap closer*, a movement ability is something like En Avant, Hell's Ingress, Smudge, Shukichi, or the aforementioned Aetherial Shift, they can be used to reach enemies sure, but they have much more flexibility, but also takes some practice since you need to be good at gauging how much distance they cover, and it's very easy to get yourself in trouble or outright dying by misusing them, plus they often have a quirk attached on top, like Hell's Ingress also gives you Regress to return to the starting spot, making it brilliant for dodging AoE markers within a GCD, En Avant gives you 3 charges, and Smudge gives you a 5 second sprint-like effect, Shukichi uses a target marker letting you have far more control over it at cost of being slower, Aetherial Shift is actually the worst of its ilk because it both has no additional quirk or effect, and has the longest cooldown by a large margin at a full minute.

Meanwhile a gap closer is something like Thunderclap, Slither or Winged Glide, those are simple and predictable, and much more similar to each other than movement abilities are, in fact Thunderclap and Slither are completely identical, while Winged Glide has a longer CD(twice as long in fact) and one fewer charges, but they all share the same 20y range and always put you at a predictable spot relative to the enemy, there ends up being much less nuance about them to make them distinct, and it's far more about how they interact with their home job.

[Mikey_R]

Seems like stretching here. My hotbars for the two are setup the same and there is barely a difference aside from GNB being more oGCD centric due to Continuation, and the Atonement combo on PLD.

...

Just because things are setup the same, doesn't mean they play the same, however, you also need to take into account that jobs do need certain tools in order to function. Tank defensives for example, Yes, they all have the same number, all with their own flavour (excluding Rampart), but they are used in the same way. But, how would you make them different? PLD can Holy Sheltron themselves and Intervention someone else in quick succession, GNB and WAR cannot do that. DRK can via Oblation but Intervention and Oblation also have different conditions on their use, Oblation being 2 charges at 60 seconds each and Intervention being on a 10 second cooldown, but being gated by the gauge, which will give enough every 22.4 seconds, as long as the PLD can auto attack. This is before we even talk about Intervention being stronger than Oblation, even before we take into account you can make it even stronger if you already have Rampart or Guardian up.

Even when tanks do get more unique things, it isn't liked. Dark Mind being useless against physical attacks? How often do you see it mentioned that it needs to have some sort of mitigation for physical attacks, the same for Heart of Light and Dark Missionary.

Going onto rotations, I already told you, in basic terms, why PLD and GNB are different in one aspect, but you blindly reject that difference just because you can put buttons in the same place, therefore, they are the same. To take this to an extreme, every job interacts with the GCD and oGCD, therefore they all play the same. In some aspect, that is true, but it misses the detail. Some GCDs have cooldowns, some oGCDs have charges, ok, some do damage, others do not, some proc others etc. As you look into the detail you can start to see how they are different. So the question is, why have you chosen to make criticisms at (what I consider) such a broad level.

But, I think the biggest thing is, how would you (or anyone else) change it? I often hear about how ARR/HW/SB done it better, but let's hear some examples. I played during that period, so I do have hands on experience and can relate (not so much for healers, weakest job role for me). I also don't want to hear the old excuse of, 'I'm not a game dev, they should be the ones doing this'. That helps nothing. You need examples, especially if you can point back to the past and say, this was better, because of X reason. Suggest how it could be better, for example, how would you change Sacred Soil and Kerachole so that they are different enough for you? By showing the kind of diversity you want, with more specific examples, it is easier to know what you are after, what you want. Just be aware that you need to keep in mind one thing. Every job has to be able to complete every piece of content. That is the only restriction.

[Jeeqbit]

Just because things are setup the same, doesn't mean they play the same

People's problem is probably that they play similar enough to the point they can be setup the same.

jobs do need certain tools in order to function. Tank defensives for example, Yes, they all have the same number, all with their own flavour (excluding Rampart)

Much of that flavor eroded. PLD's 30% mit used to be 40%. In DT, they gave each of the 30% mits a different effect (shields, healing, regen, etc). But rather than this making them unique, it has homogenized them more. You used to be able to say "DRK is the magic shield tank, PLD is the raw mit/block tank, WAR is the HP and self-heal tank, GNB is a jack of all trades" but now they are all a jack of all trades with a mixture of shields, regens, self-heals and raw mit.

PLD can Holy Sheltron themselves and Intervention someone else in quick succession, GNB and WAR cannot do that.

WAR's version also has an effect on themselves, whereas PLD's are separated (I honestly expected them to merge Intervention into Sheltron in the 6.3 revamp and was surprised it wasn't). While GNB's is not separated, it also has Aurora which they can choose to use on either themselves or the target, similar to how DRK has two utility abilities it can use on any target.

Even when tanks do get more unique things, it isn't liked.

I would say that the unique things are liked - for example a lot of people liked how DRK was in HW or SB. The problem is that unique things are liked too much - to the point people want their job to have that unique thing too. So after SE complies and gives the unique thing to all jobs, it ceases to be unique.

So the question is, why have you chosen to make criticisms at (what I consider) such a broad level.

It's less a criticism and more answering OP's question and explaining why other people feel this way. I don't personally care that much and think that SE has mostly just removed redundant abilities and listened to feedback.

However, in addition to those things, SE has simplified the rotations to make them hard to mess up. To a large degree, this has been good because it's removed annoying and redundant things, but they could be a little more interesting in some cases. Managing resources on DRK used to be genuinely challenging and get you thinking strategically, but it really isn't anymore for example; you just press all your abilities on cooldown and that's it.

But, I think the biggest thing is, how would you (or anyone else) change it? I often hear about how ARR/HW/SB done it better, but let's hear some examples.

If you played then, why do you need examples? It's tedious doing a millionth trip down memory lane trying to remember stuff from 10 years ago, especially if you can do it yourself. A lot of wikis have History tabs to see action history in the past, and old youtube videos exist to see them in action. Chances are, others write about "how jobs used to be" in the job/battle forums all the time.

how would you change Sacred Soil and Kerachole so that they are different enough for you?

I don't know about those abilities, but I can give a great example of a job that always felt different despite having all the standard healing actions: AST. The card game always set it apart, even despite all its iterations of it. The criticism of AST became that the cards were no longer unique, so SE made them unique again. But now the criticism is that the cards have no RNG and there is no Royal Road or Lord/Lady system to put bad RNG cards into, and the effects end up being the usual healing oGCDs most healers have for the most part.

The RNG and Royal Road or Lord/Lady system made it fun and dynamic, at least for me, because I had to constantly figure out what to do with the cards I was dealt. Now I know what cards I will be dealt, and I'll do virtually the same thing every time, which is dump them on the tank and dps cards on the DPS, in the same order every single time now.

[Mikey_R]

To preface, I know these aren't necessarily your points.

People's problem is probably that they play similar enough to the point they can be setup the same.

And why would some expect anything different? If we take a basic tank kit, 1 single target attack, 1 AoE, 1 ranged, 1 defensive and 1 provoke, you cannot tell me, if you had 2 tanks that had that basic kit, you wouldn't lay them out the same? How about if we add 2 more single target and 1 more AoE? You are going to put them in the same places across the jobs, doesn't matter if job 1 is a standard combo and job 2 is a 50% to proc the next one in the combo. Just to illustrate, if we assume 25 actions, just with the job basics, that is already 20% of your buttons that are going to be in the same place and that % only goes up as you add more. This is an issue of human nature, not the game systems.

Going onto defensives, did the extra 10% on sentinel actually matter? No, still used it the same as Vengeance and Shadow Wall. It even had a longer cooldown back in the day as well, did it matter? No. Nothing has changed there then.

Extra effects, Starting with the comment about DRK magic tank etc. That caused problems, we all know about HW so I won't go into it. Separating a tank into magic or physical is bad, to the point where every tank cooldown is at least partially effective against both types of damage, except Dark mind. Even Camouflage has a 10% base mitigation to go along with the purely physical mitigation from Parry. Noone is saying Dark Mind needs to be just as effective against Physical damage, it just needs to be not useless. Secondary effects on the 40% mitigation, what would you propose? Bearing in mind other cooldowns as well. Would it make sense to give GNB 2 Excog effects? Warrior having 2 sources of HP increase? Would giving PLD just straight up more mitigation (50-60%) and no additional effects be acceptable, or would that feel boring compared to the rest? These are very much subjective things.

If you played then, why do you need examples?

Because how I perceived the game doesn't necessarily mean someone else saw it in the same way. To give a basic example, DRG's old RNG 4th hit. That alone can lead to 4 different opinions. Either liked, or disliked, or, for the middle, Liked the mechanic, hated the positional part, or liked the positional part, hated the RNG. Different perspectives can help you understand why someone's thought process is as it is. And I mentioned that I did play during that time, mainly so someone doesn't have to go into full detail about the mechanic they wanted to talk about and could focus on what they thought the good design decision was.

Now a quick one on AST cards. Only 1 thing mattered, AoE balance, if you were getting unlucky, you might accept AoE Spear. As of SB, noone liked Arrow, except maybe BLM due to GCD preventing things from lining up. Bole was unreliable as a mitigation tool, so you focused on mitigating/healing with the rest of the kit, Ewer and Spire were also equally bad and you wanted to Royal Road them for AoE anyway. A similar thing can be said for Lord/Lady, you couldn't predict when you would get either one, so, especially in the case of Lady, you cannot plan around it, so you likely just used it so you could fish fore more Lords. It was a fun, unique, mechanic for more casual play, but it fell off when you tried to do harder content.

We have to remember DPS is king and has been for at least 4 expansions now, likely closer to 5 (and even at the end of ARR, it was starting to creep in). One way or another, this DPS focused mindset was going to creep in, we were all still new to the game back then and, as the game got older, we got better, we pushed those limits. This is another reason why it is useful to look back at mechanics you enjoyed or thought were better and actually think, was it better, or was it more a case of ignorance. If that mechanic was in the game now, would I actually enjoy it.

This then goes back to what I have been saying the whole time. People need to stop parroting everything someone else says and think for themselves.

If you want a quick example from me, I will say Monk. Monk used to rotate around it's attacks based on the buffs/debuff they gave. As the expansions came and went, especially in EW, I almost felt that sometimes they were getting in the way. Now, whilst I never expected them to go, part of me was a little excited to see how it would play out, especially since the rotation was changing from 112 to 123. Played it, I didn't care that the buff/debuff management was gone, as the rotation felt more chaotic. It was a bit harder to keep track of and I had to concentrate more. The buff/debuff management was replaced with something else, that I thought was better. Unfortunately, people complained and it went back to 112. It is the same we had before, just without the management. It was mad worse. The worst thing about this is people wanted rotations to be shaken up, but that was apparently too much. I see it as a good example of where people are their own worst enemies.

For your example with sacred soil and kerechole they don’t both need to be a 15 second regen, 15 second 10% mitigation in roughly a circular shape. For example neither of them need the regen but if you are going to keep it only keep it on one. One could also offer more mitigation in exchange for being shorter. SCH could also return the old dys synergy with shadowflare as a key design of sacred soil. Sacred soil also benefited for its smaller size encouraging particular placement and strat arrangement

Basically SB sacred soil should be what SCH has and SGE should be given something actually unique as it doesn’t NEED a sacred soil equivalent, even a short oGCD shield could be an equivalent, or a pankardia+shields as a mitigation.

So, the issue isn't that you would use them in the same place, but more that they are exactly the same. Though I do have to warn about Shadowflare, If it uses an Aetherflow stack, you will lose out on Aetherflow stacks to Shadowflare over the other abilities, if it was as it was in the past you then restrict the use of SS. It might be what you want, I just want to make sure that the consequences are known first.

However, to go back to the original point, that Scholar keep mitigation and Sage have a shield, should that necessarily extend to the rest of the kit? Adloquium and Eukrasian Diagnosis are the same (except MP cost), should they be changed to have different effects? Adlo mitigation and Sage can keep the shield? How would that then affect Scholar when we talk about Emergency Tactics, which Sage doesn't have an equivalent of, with the closest being Pepsis. They achieve similar things, but done differently. I could go on.

At what point does something become the same as something else? When it performs the same duty? Are we going to call basic functions of a job the same, for example the basic cure spell and equivalents? Technically, Cure is different in that it can proc Freecure, but noone cares about that. WHM and AST are stronger than SCH and SGE, but noone cares. Mainly because they aren't used admittedly, but how much different would they need to be before someone goes, yes, they are different.

[Supersnow845]

Suggest how it could be better, for example, how would you change Sacred Soil and Kerachole so that they are different enough for you? By showing the kind of diversity you want, with more specific examples, it is easier to know what you are after, what you want. Just be aware that you need to keep in mind one thing. Every job has to be able to complete every piece of content. That is the only restriction.

For your example with sacred soil and kerechole they don’t both need to be a 15 second regen, 15 second 10% mitigation in roughly a circular shape. For example neither of them need the regen but if you are going to keep it only keep it on one. One could also offer more mitigation in exchange for being shorter. SCH could also return the old dys synergy with shadowflare as a key design of sacred soil. Sacred soil also benefited for its smaller size encouraging particular placement and strat arrangement

Basically SB sacred soil should be what SCH has and SGE should be given something actually unique as it doesn’t NEED a sacred soil equivalent, even a short oGCD shield could be an equivalent, or a pankardia+shields as a mitigation.

There was no need for SGE to just copy SCH’s abilities

[Ritsugamesh]

R.e. healers and specifically SCH/SGE. They are the same job with a different coat of paint. I literally did a spreadsheet breakdown during EW mapping all their skills to figure out whether I was going stir crazy and there was something I was missing.

13 abilites were functionally IDENTICAL
7 abilities had large crossover or achieved the same function through different means
6 unique abilities for SGE, 7 for SCH that couldn't be found elsewhere in the other's kit. Examples include Icarus, Haima, Phlegma for SGE, Aetherpact (lel), Consolation, Protraction for SCH.

Just over 1/5th of the kit was unique to each job.

Even their resources. Addersgall every 20 seconds, 3 = 60, Aetherflow 3 charges every 60 seconds. Aetherflow = 20% mana, each use of an Addersgall ability = 7% mana x 3 = 21% (1% diff OMGGGGG). All the spenders are the freaking same. Bubble shield with mit, aoe heal, single target heal. It's insane.

The 'Sage is a DPS healer' is bogus. The kardia heal is just the fairy heal... tied to a GCD. There is a small amount of unique play in being able to target with Kardia buff but, guess what, I did that for 4-6 years from ARR to whenever they removed it from SCH in ShB I think? So SCH had it, they took it, SGE got it.

Just because one shoots lasers and has an instant cast shield that you'll never use because oGCD healing is all that's required and the other has a 'pet' that has been so heavily lobotomised it's almost entirely just a visual thing now. I am aware the fey spells do trigger from the pet's location, it's a very small vestige of the old system - back when SCH was a genuine pet job you controlled and had to think about. We lost all that.

The DPS have the most uniqueness to them for sure, but it's a tough sell because they all basically do different dances to achieve the same thing. There's no identity because all 4 healers need to heal, shield, res, and mit as much as the others, all 4 tanks need to tank, dps, mit, heal (for the most part) as well as the others, and all dps need to do the same dps, mit, heal as the others. Because SE have their metrics and nothing else will do.

You spend one hour in any other popular MMO and look at the class identity and tell me FFXIV isn't a total joke.

Yes, I'm bitter. I'm bitter because we had great job identity in 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0, and then it's gone steadily downhill to the 2 min meta garbage fire we have now. I loved SCH from 2.0, I loved having to keep my pet alive and having essentially 2 heals at any one time. I liked having garbage pure healing throughput because my co-healer white mage was a chad, I covered the shields and mit. Now, you can bring 2 shield, 2 pure, 1 healer, or in loads of content none, and it literally does not matter one jot.

EDIT: Oh, and we HAD to lose Nocturnal AST so SGE could exist because heaven's forfend we have 2.5 shield healers and 2 pure healers. Does this mean we'll get 2 healers in an expact so it isn't unbalanced? I highly, highly, highly doubt it.

[Valence]

EDIT: Oh, and we HAD to lose Nocturnal AST so SGE could exist because heaven's forfend we have 2.5 shield healers and 2 pure healers. Does this mean we'll get 2 healers in an expact so it isn't unbalanced? I highly, highly, highly doubt it.

What do you mean, they'll do exactly like they did for HW: they'll add a new healer that can shield and pure healer at the flip of a switch!

And it won't be AST so that SE can drink the tears of AST mains. That's how they usually alienate their vets.