Please let us keep our abilities on sync down

[Deniza]

While I see some issues on DPS skills, the bigger ones I see are on tanks and healers. Say an at-level tank only has Rampart for 20% reduction, while an over-leveled tank also has its 40% reduction. How do you deal with that? If you don't make any adjustments, then it inevitably becomes a liability having the at-level tank, which is exactly the primary goal SE is trying to avoid. If you do adjust it so that the over-leveled tank has to use both of its abilities to achieve the 20% reduction, then what was the point even keeping them both? And that's not even factoring the even higher-leveled tanks that will have their full immunity...

For me I don't see this as an issue, never really did I need many defensives in leveling dungeons. And if I did, I overpulled intentionally, knowing that I need to throw defensives.
Overpulling in FFXIV in higher dungeons is blocked through walls so again I don't see that as an issue. Same goes for full immunity, which all tanks when I remember right already have at lvl 50? So all leveling dungeons above already have those for the tanks, and all dungeons before that already get steamrolled and are no challange to even need it. Besides the one or two odd ones where you can pull almost the whole dungeon, Which is mainly ARR design in dungeons that they fixed in some reworked dungeons already.

Same with healers. What do you with a WHM that has Benediction vs. one that doesn't? You can't "adjust the potency" of a 100% heal. Either you have it or you don't.

As for your Example with WHM, everything below lvl 50 almost only needs one or two Cure II to fully heal a player, yes its not oGCD like Benediction is but the healing required in low level dungeons is minimal to none depending on who is tanking.

Remember, one of SE's biggest objectives with their system is to ensure that lower-level players (or rather *at* level players) don't get harassed because they're a liability compared to having a higher-level player. Until you can ensure any "sync" system you propose doesn't directly or indirectly encourage this, it's a non-starter.

While I respect that, trying to shield new players from harrasment. imO. it is on us.
If the community is truly "the best on the market" this shouldn't be an issue. Help people if they are new to something, have patience. Be kind. Don't be a dick. General things that we can strive for as human beings in all parts that we do, not just gaming. There are countless of examples of people leaving the group if the tank only pulled one pack at a time instead of wall to wall. And in many such cases the tank is the new player. The issue is that some people are just toxic, and restraining everyone to not have all their abilities in low level content, I think doesn't change the toxic people from being toxic. The toxic person always finds innovative ways on how to make other peoples days annoying.

[hydralus]

Honestly, even if they let you have all the abilities synced down, it wouldn't make a large improvement for me. Already spent enough time doing my max level rotation that doing it in low level content isn't suddenly going to make it interesting. The only reason I'd touch lower level content is for the rewards and even that isn't sweet enough bait most times.

[Daralii]

Same with healers. What do you with a WHM that has Benediction vs. one that doesn't? You can't "adjust the potency" of a 100% heal. Either you have it or you don't.

I don't get why people keep bringing up Benediction as if it's an insurmountable design hurdle. Essential Dignity will almost always achieve the exact same result sub-50 and is accessible at level 15.

[Supersnow845]

I don't get why people keep bringing up Benediction as if it's an insurmountable design hurdle. Essential Dignity will almost always achieve the exact same result sub-50 and is accessible at level 15.

People thinking benediction is a good skill (it’s not) is about the oldest example of “acshooly WHM is a good class” (it’s not) in this game

[VeyaAkemi]

People thinking benediction is a good skill (it’s not) is about the oldest example of “acshooly WHM is a good class” (it’s not) in this game

Well, you see, Bene is bombastic, and people judge things off of vibes 90% of the time(conservative estimate here), it's the same reason high potency finishers became so common, when they can be argued to be bad for the game's health in general, it's also how much on the Blood Lily for Afflatus Misery, when it is a damage neutral skill other than timing it during raid buffs, and even then not a spectacular gain, save for funky interactions in content like Bozja, such as using it under Lost Seraph Strike with a Profane Deep Essence(absolute drug of a combo by the way, your lvl 80 WHM will be pulling numbers that we can't do in normal content at level 100).

[Shougun]

People thinking benediction is a good skill (it’s not) is about the oldest example of “acshooly WHM is a good class” (it’s not) in this game

Reminds me of the people who were trying to nerf Paladin's Hallowed Ground meanwhile Warrior was yucking it up with best damage, best self sustain, going Holmgang back to back on tank busters due to its much lower cooldown xD.

[Collin_Sky]

Reminds me of the people who were trying to nerf Paladin's Hallowed Ground meanwhile Warrior was yucking it up with best damage, best self sustain, going Holmgang back to back on tank busters due to its much lower cooldown xD.

This is more of a problem with how infrequently SE uses tank busters in fights anymore. As a tank main I'm so tired of rotating kitchen sink and invuln. I miss having to plan my CDs.

[Striker44]

I don't get why people keep bringing up Benediction as if it's an insurmountable design hurdle. Essential Dignity will almost always achieve the exact same result sub-50 and is accessible at level 15.

Absolutes are always both the easiest to point to and the hardest to solve, since the usual argument for why "keeping abilities is okay" relies on adjusting potencies, but that becomes irrelevant for things like 100% heal or 100% invulnerabilities. (Also, Essential Dignity is an AST skill, not a WHM skill. And "almost always" isn't "100% guaranteed always".)

For me I don't see this as an issue, never really did I need many defensives in leveling dungeons. And if I did, I overpulled intentionally, knowing that I need to throw defensives.

The issue is that you can overpull when you have those extra defensives without affecting the group. Without them, the healer will need to throw extra heals your way, which means losing DPS and thus taking longer to clear the dungeon. If a high-level tank keeps its extra defensives when doing a low-level dungeon, you now have noticeably faster runs compared to an at-level tank. Core design requirement failed.

As for your Example with WHM, everything below lvl 50 almost only needs one or two Cure II to fully heal a player, yes its not oGCD like Benediction is but the healing required in low level dungeons is minimal to none depending on who is tanking.

Again, as soon as you introduce the difference, it's no longer valid. Even though it's extremely rare to see a party that's either entirely new or almost entirely new today, that still remains the design focus. The "depending on who is tanking" is key. Every extra GCD heal a Healer needs to throw either because the tank doesn't have additional defensive CD's or the Healer doesn't have additional oGCD heals slows down the run and makes an at-level player a liability.

I can't emphasize enough that this is the single most important point SE has repeatedly put forward about why you lose abilities when syncing. Ignoring that point is just going to lead to exercises in futility in frustration. The first and most important question to ask yourself when proposing a solution to syncing is "Will this naturally make an at-level player a liability compared to an over-leveled player (i.e. will the run take longer and/or be more likely to fail)?" If the answer is "yes", you have a non-starter.

[Deniza]

The issue is that you can overpull when you have those extra defensives without affecting the group. Without them, the healer will need to throw extra heals your way, which means losing DPS and thus taking longer to clear the dungeon. If a high-level tank keeps its extra defensives when doing a low-level dungeon, you now have noticeably faster runs compared to an at-level tank. Core design requirement failed.

It all depends on how much damage the downscaled tank or other downscaled classes do. Its a scaling thing and right now if you run with a completely fresh group you already have a longer dungeon runtime than if you run with completely lvl 100 BiS people who get synched down. Difference is a few minutes. The aim for SE dungeons is 12-20 minutes. Sometimes a dungeon can take 25 minutes. I'm saying that because the duty support NPC's are scaled around how much damage you make. If you are doing more they are doing less, the dungeon always takes roughtly the same time. which is around 20 minutes with duty support. Does that hurt? For the current reward structure yes. Rarely dungeons take longer with players.

Again, as soon as you introduce the difference, it's no longer valid. Even though it's extremely rare to see a party that's either entirely new or almost entirely new today, that still remains the design focus. The "depending on who is tanking" is key. Every extra GCD heal a Healer needs to throw either because the tank doesn't have additional defensive CD's or the Healer doesn't have additional oGCD heals slows down the run and makes an at-level player a liability.

If we are talking below lvl 50 dungeons, what damage can a WHM in big packs effectively do that is speeding up the dungeon? Holy is a lvl 45 skill, everything below a WHM is basically just single target tagging along, in overpulled packs they are just healing. No damage they do speeds up anything.

I can't emphasize enough that this is the single most important point SE has repeatedly put forward about why you lose abilities when syncing. Ignoring that point is just going to lead to exercises in futility in frustration. The first and most important question to ask yourself when proposing a solution to syncing is "Will this naturally make an at-level player a liability compared to an over-leveled player (i.e. will the run take longer and/or be more likely to fail)?" If the answer is "yes", you have a non-starter.

And as many people mentioned already other games perfectly showed that it is possible without new players being a liability. In some games new players do even more damage than synced down players, which from what I gathered few would care if they where able to hit their abilities because damage in low level dungeons is not a problem ever.

Having said all that, Balancing shouldn't be our concern to begin with unless something is unbalanced. The devs know the numbers better than we do. In the offchance they are going to think about implementing this change they would be doing the balancing with their data not based around our speculations what could go wrong.
And as its just a numbers game, it all comes down to: Do they wanna put in the work or not. Because it definitely is possible.

[Shougun]

Just sync the defensives to the very same concept that healing and damage potency. I am all for making the high level player work to be of similar output of an at level (who is doing it with less skills).

Also in normal content it really, really, doesn't matter if the high level player was doing slightly better (technically this is already massively true due to ilvl creep). The content is so easy and people play so brain dead that unless we are adding other changes, it's like a big whoop lol. One button ice mage doesn't even matter. I can't tell you how many times I hit the end and was like "huh, almost most damage, most healing, and most tanked" everyone was asleep I can see... When your tank becomes your main healer cause the healer keeps dying and only one other dps is paying attention.


Willing to talk about other changes too though (it is why one of my suggestions also gobbled up ilvl creep), just saying in our current situation it really seems like if you hit roughly equal or even slightly under and let features shine, that it's nearly irrelevant.