Genuine Question about Job Homogeneity

[ZephyrMenodora]

Play healer for more than 10 hours and see if you don't change your tune. If not, well some people like watching paint dry so to each their own I guess.....

I have played healers for over 10 years in this game. It's why I don't think they all play exactly the same.

It looks like you have as well, making it all the more surprising that you find them identical.

[Mecia]

Its all the 30/60/120 CDs and copy paste 50 spender gauges for me.

[AmiableApkallu]

Well, that's the thing though. I specifically do my bars so they resemble each other across jobs, because my brain remembers button combos better than it does spell lists, and even with this, I still really dislike SGE compared to my SCH. I think it's more about enjoying the job rather than being able to just play it, which admittedly isn't very hard to do for any of the jobs.

I'm with you there, truth be told. I'll play SCH over SGE any day, given the choice. (For example.)

It's one thing to be functional at each of the jobs, which is something that can be facilitated by hotbar layout. It's quite another thing to feel that they're equally enjoyable.

Writing this comment has also made me think of something: I play on controller, so now I'm starting to wonder how much that influences how I feel about Job diversity.

As a keyboard (+mouse) player, I've been giving advice to a controller-playing friend. Things get "interesting" when I assume my usual 36 buttons (three 12-button hotbars), and they insist on 32 buttons (two 16-button crossbars).

[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.

[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.

[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.

[CVXIV]

It's funny because in regard to the shield healers I prefer sage over scholar, but I think that also has to do with the fact that because I leveled summoner I also leveled scholar without gradually learning the skills and getting the chance to use it

I'm also in the same boat where I agree with you and that I don't see the job homogenization to the extent people talk about

There are some that feel very similar, with the tanks coming to mind because of how similar their cooldowns are to one another with the exception being dark knight to an extent

I believe they intend on tackling job identity with 8.0 and I'm curious what it'll bring personally but in my mind I imagine big sweeping changes and I can't really see them doing something like that, but that's another discussion entirely

edit: Rereading your post regarding the tanks was a bit amusing
I enjoy tanking and if I had to pick I'd say my favorites would be a tossup between paladin (being able to cover healers and invuln or heal to try to save people is just so much fun) and dark knight (I love greatswords and enjoy the job in previous FF games)

Gunbreaker is really fun too, I like the rapid strikes though I'll always find it a weird choice being a tank
Could've been a DPS job with maiming gear if they wanted to have the armored look to it
Least favorite is warrior because I find it kinda boring to play

[Supersnow845]

the 4 healers are just a mess because really we have 1 healer with 4 flavours but certain abilities just make 2 of the healers better in almost all categories than the other 2 even though they all feel the same

SGE and SCH are basically the same job but somehow SCH is better in almost all categories anyway even though it doesn’t feel any different playing SGE

Like how do you create the same class twice but somehow one is still better than the other

[BabyYoda]

Warrior and dark knight are the same job
SCH and SGE are the same job
RPR and VPR have the same awakening skill

Most jobs do 123 combo
All healers have 1 spam and 1 dot for 99% of their DPS rotation.

All jobs are designed around 30,60,120 s window and they are similar up to 90% of the same skill.

Uniqueness for most jobs are 120 s skill and that's the problem, that means each fight you are allowed to be unique 5 times only if the fight duration is 10min.
Uniqueness should be in the most spammy combo to the job instead of 120s skill.

Game do not allow players to have agency on their build so if you play SMN you are playing 100% exactly like all other SMN.


So yes the job design is so similar and you could just change Icons and weapon to create new job