Genuine Question about Job Homogeneity

[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.