Job design mindset need to change

[BabyYoda]

both PvE and PvP successful games reached one day to what we are having now in FFXIV but if we consider 8.0 would be "the job design expansion" that means it took 8 years to reach this point.

I want to share my thoughts of many games that was similar to FFXIV current design and successfully moved on:

1- Each job should be unfair, there is no such a thing called balance, instead of making all jobs fair change the mind set to make all jobs unfair and unbalanced, this will destroy homogenization.

2- Develop a sub category for each role and make them unique on that category, each sub category will have a noticeable different playstyle that others.

3- one job can have 2 things to do, not 4 not 5, like if there is a job who is doing dots + RNG + keeping buffs then this have to change to focus on 2 things only, this will make other jobs which have nothing start to have something more unique.

4- different jobs are better in different encounters, and that's doesn't mean other jobs are bad but they are better in different situations.


What do think?

[Alice_Rivers]

I think they should take a level of inspiration from RTS balance, principly "equal but different", while allowing for a loose balance point so that it never has to be perfect.

To give a couple of examples, strictly in principle:-
PLD: THE mitigation tank, all about using that shield to reduce damage taken and has minimal - if any - heals.
WAR: THE heal tank, basically the reverse of the PLD, it has many heals (though maybe not quite as powerful as now) but minimal mits.
DRK: The parry all the things tank, tapping back into it's roots it seeks to maximise it's parry chance and shields what it has to while turning incoming damage into outgoing damage be that with an HP scalar or through it's gauge.
GNB: Then becomes all about evasion, I'll leave it to more creative minds to flesh it out though - I haven't ideas.

In terms of healers I'd offer:-
WHM: Raw power heals. Heals infrequently but for vast amounts when it does and foregoes regens.
SCH: Stays more or less as it is with an added focus on shields since my SGE model doesn't step on that territory. Prioritses planning ahead, possibly expanding on the Excog model so more of SCH's own abilities have extra activation conditions. Whether those are for the ability activation at all or in the vein of AST's Earthly Star doesn't really bother me, leave it to the SCH pros.
AST: I'd say double down on regens, timed effects and most of all card play, people have said on these forums about how it used to have various card modifiers and abilities - Bring them back so that cards can become the central pillar of the job.
SGE: Mits and patches, focuses mainly on reducing damage and applying smaller heals when people do take damage, maybe reverse the current kardia model so that heals do a little aoe damage based on the recipient(s). (It's not the best idea, I'm sure, but I'm not creative so I'm sure someone else will think of better)

Similarly the 2 minute meta, while I wouldn't through it out all together, I would throw out the one minute part so that the jobs can have more peculiar cooldown timers.

[Nero-Voidstails]

I don't see warrior as you do not gonna lie I see warrior as the berserk job so to me warrior should do more damage then any other at the cost of defense.

allow me to elaborate a tiny bit more.

warrior should do 15% more damage then any tank but take 5/10% more damage but also have 25% more HP.

question of mitigation it should be more into taking care of the defensive nerf but give a decent Regen instead or like a massive shield with a Regen but when the shield deplete it could fill a special gauge to do more damage and heal on hit.



sage to me should only know DPS move with two shield and some miti with shield I thing the move use should change the amount heal with kardia instead making it more unique and fill the role it should always have been a DPS healer

[Amvin]

To give a couple of examples, strictly in principle:-
PLD: THE mitigation tank, all about using that shield to reduce damage taken and has minimal - if any - heals.
WAR: THE heal tank, basically the reverse of the PLD, it has many heals (though maybe not quite as powerful as now) but minimal mits.
DRK: The parry all the things tank, tapping back into it's roots it seeks to maximise it's parry chance and shields what it has to while turning incoming damage into outgoing damage be that with an HP scalar or through it's gauge.
GNB: Then becomes all about evasion, I'll leave it to more creative minds to flesh it out though - I haven't ideas.

While that sounds really nice on paper, it wouldn't work in the current raid environment, unless (taking wAR as example) you buff warrior hitpoints substantially so it can survive various mechanics with only minimal mitigation.
What I'm getting at is that such changes would need to be complimented by major fight design changes and I doubt they'd do either or both.

[Supersnow845]

SCH is literally derived from a DPS, I think it has a better claim to DPS healer than SGE does as much as yoshi p tried to sell SGE that way

[Alice_Rivers]

I don't see warrior as you do not gonna lie I see warrior as the berserk job so to me warrior should do more damage then any other at the cost of defense.

allow me to elaborate a tiny bit more.

warrior should do 15% more damage then any tank but take 5/10% more damage but also have 25% more HP.

question of mitigation it should be more into taking care of the defensive nerf but give a decent Regen instead or like a massive shield with a Regen but when the shield deplete it could fill a special gauge to do more damage and heal on hit.

I'm glad to have engagement from people who actually play tanks rather than (just) healing them, it is a weakness of my position. I think it's a cool idea to have WAR play that way, it would have good synergy with my SCH/SGE models.

sage to me should only know DPS move with two shield and some miti with shield I thing the move use should change the amount heal with kardia instead making it more unique and fill the role it should always have been a DPS healer

While I'd like to avoid the overlap of shields for SCH and SGE, I could see this sort of thing, maybe the reverse of what I suggested? You cast DPS and get target based AoE heal/shield/mits?

While that sounds really nice on paper, it wouldn't work in the current raid environment, unless (taking wAR as example) you buff warrior hitpoints substantially so it can survive various mechanics with only minimal mitigation.
What I'm getting at is that such changes would need to be complimented by major fight design changes and I doubt they'd do either or both.

If I come at this from the previous poster's suggestion of doing and taking more damage with an increased HP cap, maybe in place of the current big mits WAR should get big max HP abilities? Give it more HP management play? I'm not sure if these Max HP increases should fill themselves or demand the healer follow through, I understand calls for the former but being a healer I naturally lean toward giving the healer more responsibility and ensuring that tanks still attrit when left unattended.

There probably would need to be changes to fight design but then looking at the demand for that, I would like SE to be looking at that as a potential 9.0 focus.

[Nero-Voidstails]

I don't see warrior as you do not gonna lie I see warrior as the berserk job so to me warrior should do more damage then any other at the cost of defense.

allow me to elaborate a tiny bit more.

warrior should do 15% more damage then any tank but take 5/10% more damage but also have 25% more HP.

question of mitigation it should be more into taking care of the defensive nerf but give a decent Regen instead or like a massive shield with a Regen but when the shield deplete it could fill a special gauge to do more damage and heal on hit.



sage to me should only know DPS move with two shield and some miti with shield I thing the move use should change the amount heal with kardia instead making it more unique and fill the role it should always have been a DPS healer

[Mikey_R]

I think they should take a level of inspiration from RTS balance, principly "equal but different", while allowing for a loose balance point so that it never has to be perfect.

To give a couple of examples, strictly in principle:-
PLD: THE mitigation tank, all about using that shield to reduce damage taken and has minimal - if any - heals.
WAR: THE heal tank, basically the reverse of the PLD, it has many heals (though maybe not quite as powerful as now) but minimal mits.
DRK: The parry all the things tank, tapping back into it's roots it seeks to maximise it's parry chance and shields what it has to while turning incoming damage into outgoing damage be that with an HP scalar or through it's gauge.
GNB: Then becomes all about evasion, I'll leave it to more creative minds to flesh it out though - I haven't ideas.

Equal but different is what we have now, what you have described is different and not equal.

PLD is essentially what we have now (more so for DRK), so I won't comment on it.

WAR, depending on how much you want the WAR to be able to heal will depend on whether it is useful or not, with it being hard to find that sweet spot. However, the issue is with the minimal mits. You have to be able to survive anything (that you are intended to survive), so you are still going to have the bare minimum for that. So, how is that different to what we have now? And, just to say, to the person said WAR should do more damage, have more HP and take more damage, again, you will need to be able to survive anything, so what you essentially saying is to give WAR a 15% damage increase over other tanks, which destroys balance in this DPS focused game. You can also look at HW where WAR was the best tank, no questions asked. I can also tag on initial ARR WAR as a job that was meant to be high HP, minimal mitigation and big heals and it didn't work. It didn't work that they completely revamped the job in 2.1, with one of the things being more mitigation.

DRK, Parry doesn't work on magic attacks and is RNG, so you still need enough mitigation to cover an entirely magic fight. You also do not want to rely on RNG mitigation to survive, this is why all mitigation is guaranteed. PLD's old Bulwark (from the early days) just increased the block rate, but didn't make it guaranteed. You never relied upon it for tank busters. If you did make something that gives DRK a 100% guaranteed parry rate, it is then functionally the same as a 20% damage mitigation, with downsides. Downsides include not being able to block magic and not being able to parry when you are stunned or downed (or anything else that prevents you from taking action). this is the whole reason why PLD's Holy Sheltron that used to guarantee a block was changed to mitigation, as DSR made Holy Sheltron useless for certain cases.

GNB, same as Parry, it is just much more swingy in damage. You cannot rely on evasion to dodge attacks, so you need to have the guaranteed mitigation in order to survive. Pretty much the same issues with parry apply here, except, if you can guarantee evasion, not only do you avoid all damage, you could break mechanics that rely on debuffs to function. It just ruins everything.

The crux of everything is, with how damage profiles (fairly low damage with damage spikes for mechanics), you need to have the guaranteed mitigation in order to survive those high damage spikes. This is what we have. Dark Mind only being magic damage mitigation was always something that many DRK's hated, they at least wanted some sort of physical mitigation, and they finally got it. Dark Missionary and Heart of Light only being magic was a problem for physical raidwides, which has now been sorted.

All that tanks have different effects on their short cooldowns, their high mitigation cooldowns are all different, their invulns are all different, 90 second cooldowns, all different. The only things that are the same are Rampart, Reprisal and to an extent, arm's length, but these are all role actions, so that is expected.

In short, tanks are equal and they are different, mitigation wise.

[Nero-Voidstails]

also for sch I wouldn't change much other then using more healing to the fairy and have emergency tactics as a toogle like when not in use the sch shield the fairy pure heal when in use seraph is summoned changing all fairies ability into a less powerful version but shield and of crit grant both like the sch while the sch now become pure heals. while emergency is also toogle on sacred soil now give a shield instead of have Regen and whisper now give a shield the get stronger as it's in use. for last sch could get a skill that would have a cooldown of 3 minutes.
aetherical reversion. can target self or other party member turn all damage taken into a healing but turn all healing into a damage healing would cause double damage for a duration of 10 second.


for darknight it's simple I would give them a buff of 5% in defense and offence and a 10% in HP turning edge and flood into a HP use skills instead of mp tbn stay the same but a 10 second instead of a 6 abyssal drain stay the same but now esteem now still the target HP and when done the darknight get all the HP stole back and edge and flood would be a 10% HP drain on use.

[Alice_Rivers]

I would argue that the equality is in the abilities built around these principles and having each tank capable of reducing a given amount of damage (give or take 5-10%) to zero in a given timeframe.

On the WAR problem, I understand that it's a difficult balancing act but I think it would be easier to achieve if mits and heals were exclusive (though not necessarilly mutually so) and then rather than healing per se, the heals WAR would get should be seen as effective mitigation. I would balance them principly internally such that while an effect of "heals for 20% of outgoing damage" might interact with party buffs the WAR itself wouldn't have the ability to make that scale out of control.

Couldn't the magic parry be 'fixed' with a flag change though? Not saying these alone would fix what I put forth but I do consider them steps toward a solution.