Are Ultimates a major contributor to Job Design issues?

[Mikey_R]

I'm not sure even that is really necessary.
Sustain jobs like Paladin were fine when raid buffs were still 60, 90, 120 and 180 seconds because the different timings of FoF and Req allowed Paladin to take advantage of the multiple different buff windows, it wasn't the 2nd highest dps tank in most of ShB for no reason.

It's really only the consolidation of all buffs into the same window that killed sustain dps jobs

Which is true, to a degree. Paladin was a weird job in that it was buffed for the vast majority of it's GCDs, so you could make the argument that it was no wonder it all lined up, because the chances of it not are slim. In a different mindset, this buffed damage was PLD's baseline, with a boost during Req and a slight dip when there is no FoF or Req.

However, temp raid buffs could potentially hinder job diversity. Imagine for a second 2 burst DPS, one where the buffed period is fixed, like Dragoon and another where it could be more flexible, as an example, take Monk, remove RoF and Brotherhood and make Perfect Balance and Masterful Blitz the burst window for Monk (with Perfect balance boosting damage). With perfect balance, you can be very very flexible with were you burst in a vacuum, you could delay it for an important ADD to take down as an example. Dragoon is as it is now (minus Battle Litany for this example).

If I now introduce a job that has a raid buff, the Monk is now going to want to put it's burst damage in that window, necessarily restricting where it can burst and losing that previous flexibility. Whilst Dragoon is hoping that the timing's on their burst window line up with the raid buff to make full use of it.

This is why I bought up Ninja in my post as it was the first job to have a universal raid (de)buff (Foe's Requiem was magic only) and that one debuff alone necessarily wanted people to make full use of it. We didn't have the insane potencies we have now, but it was still a factor. It causes jobs to funnel into that window, which is the same path that got us to where we are now.

As for ShB, being the last expansion before the 2 minute meta, most jobs were already 60/120 second jobs, with 90 second being uncommon and 180 being even rarer. But this is where the problem arises. Why should I bring the 90 second job when I can replace it with the 60 second job and get more damage out of it? That raid buff at 90 second is only really benefitting that one job and the odd action here and there. It is just in this weird, awkward spot. Maybe, shove it into the 120 second window? Just so it feels a but better to use. So again, we are shoving things into the raid window.

We could make some jobs 60/120, some 90 in about a roughly equal split, but could that then split the jobs down the middle, only wanting to party with jobs of their own buff timings? Would adjusting a job to fit both make it over/under powered in either one?

So it comes down to 2 main reasons why I do think they should go. The first being, we tried it, and throughout the expansions, it just kept getting shoved into the 2 minute meta it is now. It could end in a 3 minute meta if done differently, but it would still be the same complaints. The second, it necessarily reduces how you can build a jobs damage profile. By making these raid buffs, you are saying, dump all high potency attacks here, even if you job really doesn't want to. You kill the ability to provide flexibility in some jobs and diversify the way jobs do their damage.

Note, that this doesn't stop raid buffs going out, just ones that provide an increase in damage. Arcane Circle and Brotherhood are raid buffs that rely on the rest of the team to buff the job using them. There is also the case of keeping raid buffs up 100% of the time can be something that the job has to maintain by pressing more than just 1 button.

This all being said, there is no real right or wrong answer to this dilemma. Different people are going to have different opinions about what they think is the right direction, which does highlight the fact this is a more complex matter than it might initially seem.

[Valence]

When have jobs been changed specifically for specific pieces of high-end content? Esuna becoming an instant cast is the only time I can remember this happening in recent years and I'm not sure how that could reduce someone's enjoyment of the game in any way. Generally, when a job is changed, it's because it doesn't function well within the wider scope of the game. It doesn't have anything to do with specific pieces of high-end content.

They inflated most healing and mitigation abilities to ludicrous ranges to accommodate for P10S, and further continued to water down any tactical consideration tied to the battle system.

[Azurarok]

sacred soil/asylum/earthly star became enormous for the giant arenas and hitboxes they started doing in EW high-end content, which made them barely different from a raidwide heal in most other content.
Earthly Star's also made AST worse in field operations/open world maps and Deep Dungeon since those often have things you don't want to pull.

[Kohashi]

They inflated most healing and mitigation abilities to ludicrous ranges to accommodate for P10S, and further continued to water down any tactical consideration tied to the battle system.

I doubt it, but they did expand the range of some abilities. This happened because they wanted to experiment with different arena designs, and p10 was the first to fall under that category. It was a pretty common occurrence for DPS to die after Divinding Wings 2, especially if mits were missing or healers didn't sprint. I wish we had Aetherial shift back then...LOL.

[Valence]

I doubt it, but they did expand the range of some abilities. This happened because they wanted to experiment with different arena designs, and p10 was the first to fall under that category. It was a pretty common occurrence for DPS to die after Divinding Wings 2, especially if mits were missing or healers didn't sprint. I wish we had Aetherial shift back then...LOL.

P10S didn't need those changes and neither did anything else, change my mind (I can't speak for TOP though, haven't done it).

[Voryn]

Worth noting they made a bunch of smaller job changes RIGHT BEFORE releasing Chaotic Raids a short while later, suggesting that the developers thought the changes were "necessary" to possibly make those jobs function properly in Chaotic.

Like, can anyone picture a NIN trying to do the old "don't move, don't even turn" Ten Chi Jin with all of those supposed body checks?

The recent job changes were along with FRU release so I’m still thinking they were likely in consideration of that. Chaotic doesn’t have a scary dps check that requires good balancing for all jobs to be viable, and delaying Ten Chi Jin a little for the sake of doing mechanics is not going to matter that much when you can have many deaths in Chaotic and still clear as long as failed mechanics don’t cause a complete wipe. Meanwhile in a new ultimate everyone needs to be doing as much damage as possible to beat the dps check.

And if any further job changes occur from here on out, does anyone really think it's because people are struggling with said job mechanics in normal content?

There’s definitely changes for the sake of normal content. Like DRK’s buff to Abyssal Drain’s healing, even though that ability isn’t used in raids. But it does seem these changes are less common than those made for the sake of raiding.

It's at a point where they might as well just give people a completely different set of skills/hotbars for this or that PVE content. It's not like they don't have a bunch of unused skill animations and affects lying around. (Sure, you don't need a damaging gap closer on your Dark Knight and Gunbreaker for ABC fight, but what about the XYZ one? And so forth and so on.)

A damaging gap closer isn’t the best example (when have we needed one that does damage?), but they wouldn’t have to do an extreme solution of having so many versions of each job if they could be balanced properly without making all of them simpler. I want my favourite job to be fun in both DSR and UWU. And if people complain “oh no it’s annoying to do [thing] during a raid” then they could pick one of the easier jobs. But I’m not enough of an expert to know how to accomplish this: DSR assumes tanks can handle up to five tankbusters in around 2.5 minutes during its phase 6 but UWU does not ask for this much.

[Buttobi]

It is not too crazy for jobs to be balanced around the highest difficulty content. It becomes a problem when there is a total disregard for how they play in the content outside of that. The balance is lovely, especially compared to other games, but this game leaves a lot to be desired in other areas when it comes to job design.

[Supersnow845]

I doubt it, but they did expand the range of some abilities. This happened because they wanted to experiment with different arena designs, and p10 was the first to fall under that category. It was a pretty common occurrence for DPS to die after Divinding Wings 2, especially if mits were missing or healers didn't sprint. I wish we had Aetherial shift back then...LOL.

If people missed mitigation that’s a positioning issue that’s on the party to fix, not just call it unfixable and make all bubbles raidwide heals

[Kohashi]

If people missed mitigation that’s a positioning issue that’s on the party to fix, not just call it unfixable and make all bubbles raidwide heals

In theory, yes, practically, it tells me you never did the fight, yet you comment.

So let me explain. Aside from the big damage that the initial hit was doing, the person tasked with breaking the webs would also get a heavy dot. Unless you had a healer on the DPS platform, the likelihood of them dying was pretty high (even with mits), especially early in the tier when you did not have BiS nor echo.

On top of it, the entire fight was a healer check.

@Valence
"P10S didn't need those changes and neither did anything else, change my mind (I can't speak for TOP though, haven't done it)."

It's impossible to change somebody's made-up mind nor do I really care all that much. While you are clearly the best person in the universe who can do every single mechanic flawlessly and without a sweat, the reality was completely different in PF and with average people doing that fight. Even if you are that good, the fights are never designed for the 0.01% of people but for the average who also makes a lot of mistakes.

PS: please join my re-clear parties. I am sick and tired to re-prog every single damn week, M3s and m4s with ppl in pf that can't still do those stupid fights after so many damn months.

[Supersnow845]

In theory, yes, practically, it tells me you never did the fight, yet you comment.

So let me explain. Aside from the big damage that the initial hit was doing, the person tasked with breaking the webs would also get a heavy dot. Unless you had a healer on the DPS platform, the likelihood of them dying was pretty high (even with mits), especially early in the tier when you did not have BiS nor echo.

On top of it, the entire fight was a healer check.

@Valence
"P10S didn't need those changes and neither did anything else, change my mind (I can't speak for TOP though, haven't done it)."

It's impossible to change somebody's made-up mind nor do I really care all that much. While you are clearly the best person in the universe who can do every single mechanic flawlessly and without a sweat, the reality was completely different in PF and with average people doing that fight. Even if you are that good, the fights are never designed for the 0.01% of people but for the average who also makes a lot of mistakes.

PS: please join my re-clear parties. I am sick and tired to re-prog every single damn week, M3s and m4s with ppl in pf that can't still do those stupid fights after so many damn months.

“It tells me you didn’t do the fight”

It’s really easy to act like you have a point when you can just accuse others of not doing the fight.

You do not need stupidly large bubbles for P10S unless you were stingy on heals that stuck to the person needing healing, as to the point you directed towards valence acting like simplification is always justified because it makes harder content more accessible is just end endless self perpetuating cycle

And let’s say you actually did need the giant bubbles (you don’t), 1 savage fight is not justification to completely alter something as fundamental as bubble size to make it so ridiculous as to be comical