Thread: 8.0 DPS Job Rework Workshop/Megathread. Goals, Design Principles, and Mock-Ups.

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Hiding feedback again in order not to cause excess scrolling time between original posts:

Just two points I want to focus on most:

They're not exactly the same, though, especially so long as you return timers to Disciplined Fist and Demolish, though there may, yes, be a best choice in each GCD.

Skills with high individual damage are best used under damage buffs. Everything else is best used under speed to increase the portion of uptime spent on stronger skills, because amping the weaker skills by 5% is not worth as much as getting through them 5.3% (actually quantized by durations, but this is just a spherical cow) faster and thereby increasing the portion of stronger skills that are then further amplified.

Like, if we want the stances to be choices at all, then we're going need to have...

1. branching paths that still ultimately (though in complicated fashion) have a best answer or
2. clear best answers across a 60- or 120-second period (due to Blitz, Disciplined, and Demolish line-ups), or
3. at minimum, preferred stances for each action (Wind for low-pppgcd [personal potency per gcd] skills, Fire for high potency-GCDs where oGCDs in gap are obviously included),
   or...
   
   
4. as before, Wind and Earth are dps losses used only as a last resort and rarely able to make any real difference to survivability or mobility anyways (unless you amp the hell out of them, risking making Earth OP overall, or redesign them to use a sort of granular resource)...
5. at which point, you might as well have Wind and Earth consume MP and remove Fire altogether, or
6. turn Fists of Fire into your granular Riddle of Fire phase -- perhaps only affecting beast skills or adding flat potency if worried about them being overly obligatory for oGCDs and/or Blitz or applying some other way to force stance-rotation, such as, idk, ramping drain costs from staying in a given stance too long.

Whatever the case, adding that allows for some small-gap skill-expression akin to Shadowbringers positionals for those who like a stick-shift feel that's less hamfisted and not nearly so wasteful as Shadowbringers' stances.

The original point was to prevent any situation where you would be forced to have a burst in a specific point in your rotation, so it does go against the initial design direction. Even with stating to have a 'clear best answer across a 60- or 120- second period' is what I was trying to avoid. Break away from that standardisation that has plagued jobs since EW. Now, I'm not saying this idea couldn't work, however, I do believe this sort of idea should be the foundation of the job and then the rest of the job built on top. This way, you can bring in the individual elements together and have it feel complete rather than trying to ham fist it into my design which would have 2 different ideas kind of fighting and opposing each other. The more complete ideas we can have for jobs, the better at the end of the day.

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Not many. My point, though, was just that it's a raid-scaled skill that at best gets up to, well, flat potency damage that'd normally be the baseline, and is sort of the opposite of support thematically (everyone supports the Bard, instead of the Bard supporting others).

Thinking about it, wouldn't all raid buffs also suffer with less people? So in essence, Brotherhood and Arcane Circle is no different. I also like the distinction between 'everyone supports the Bard' and 'the Bard supports everyone else'. With most jobs following the 'Bard supports everyone', having more jobs break away from that and instead going along the lines of 'everyone supports the Bard' is another direction a job can take to make it stand out from others.

Originally Posted by Caldra

- Make Hyoton into a 60 second dot with good potency! (Could maybe add a raiju stack, too)

Not really a Ninja user, but isn't the fact Hyoton synergises with Kassatsu to make Hyosho Ranryu give a use to Hyoton?

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Or even return Mutilate and Shadowfang on one of said combos...

As long as it uses Dancing Edge's animation.

Originally Posted by Shurrikhan

Or is the community still on a hate-binge for DoTs (per which the concept itself is inseparable from any dated intuitiveness of XIV UI in general -- including effect caps and lack of any decent effect display filtering) that may hold it back presently)?

For me personally, a DoT shouldn't be added just for the sake of having a DoT. The DoT should have some influence in how the job is played in some way or be interacted with in one form or another. As an example, Hignbana. Again, not a high level Samurai player, but it is from my understanding that how you exit the burst phase and your GCD speed influences how you prepare for the next, which is mostly based around the timing of Higanbana, or, going back to an older version of Bard where the DoTs were the ones that procced Repertoire and also had the chance for a double proc if both DoTs crit etc.

Originally Posted by Mikey_R

The original point was to prevent any situation where you would be forced to have a burst in a specific point in your rotation, so it does go against the initial design direction. Even with stating to have a 'clear best answer across a 60- or 120- second period' is what I was trying to avoid.

Barring that, it just means your rotation is externally affected instead, though, no? If even a single raid buff remains and there is no penalty otherwise for holding for up to 120s (no fight-specific vulnerability window for enemies or buff window for you or DPS check or %HP phase threshold, etc), you'll do it within that raidbuff.

We already have a best use for every GCD. Adding more depth atop what we already have doesn't gameplay any more subject to optimization or to the fact that everything can, with enough information and computation, be perfectly optimized. It just makes it that much more susceptible to change and makes that optimization that much less obvious to your average skilled player.

Moreover, let's say we do somehow remove all raidbuffs, all encounter-based variation of damage output, and all DPS checks so that one has no pressure to use a skill at any particular given time. Would that even be better gameplay anyways?

:: Note that my point was that there would be a best answer for a given GCD (out of some 120 seconds) dependent on what you did the GCD/rotational-string/burst-sequence before, not that there'd be a best overall answer across 60/120 seconds; any refusal to swap between them based around those branching choices would be a DPS loss, even if a small one.

Thinking about it, wouldn't all raid buffs also suffer with less people?

Of course. And a WHM/SGE, VPR/SAM, DNC/BLM/PIC, Tank composition is therefore going to put out slightly more total damage in 4-man content.

If we wanted to balance that out, the solution is basically the same as on AoE heals -- split the effect. Except in buffs' case, you'd start them at higher power before reducing the % per person beyond 4 people (down to the current values at the max of 8 players affected). Could still be better in 8-man, for flavor's sake; just reduce the penalty slightly for taking raid-buffers to Light Party content. (Yes, I'm aware that Mug and Chain Strategem would thereby need a retweak and/or attached hidden/dummy buff for regulation.)

Or, better still, just start giving jobs enough unique utility that we're unlikely to care about the slight damage loss. Perhaps make the raidbuffs themselves more bankable and thereby make them actual utility instead of constraints relative to any other way to provide the given amount of potency within X seconds' window per Y seconds' frequency.

(Hairbrained spitball: Hell, you could have each buffer bring a certain amount of bonus starting LB and LB generation, make the buffs themselves especially efficient LB-spenders (with diminishing efficiency on reuse).)

As long as it uses Dancing Edge's animation.

Spinning Edge -> enhances next attack (buff not consumed by Gust Slash)
Gust Slash -> slight cleave, blink-strike [without movement-lock] -- extent of bonuses affected by Haste
Aeolian Edge -> slight radial AoE, bonus movement speed just before and after activation -- both buffed by Haste

Mutilate -> guaranteed crit from stealth, auto-dodge against certain attack types during animation
Shadowfang -> DoT, empowerable by shadow/stealth actions
Dancing Edge -> deals flat bonus damage per strike based on Haste and applies that buff to auto-attacks

Mix-and-matchable.

Would something like that work?

For me personally, a DoT shouldn't be added just for the sake of having a DoT.

Apart from a rare few mistaking DoTs for an identity (when the identity is instead usually, at best, just trading control/utility for raw throughput over time, assuming the DoT job exists in an MMO not plagued by decontextualized numbers-envy), I don't think anyone's suggested adding a DoT "just for the sake of adding a DoT".

The goal is almost always instead the gameplay/expression a DoT can allow -- a soft CD, setup if capitalized upon (able to gap-close to a debuffed enemy, able to detonate the DoT for AoE damage, etc. all requiring forethought enough to pull off), TTK management (and the priority conflict between optimizing damage over time and taking an enemy out of the fight asap), having rotation vary with enemy count beyond just swapping to a watered-down AoE-clone of said rotation, global tick tracking, etc.

Now, each of those factors can be done separately. You could have a direct damage action that stores up to 30 seconds of charge for proportionate damage but can be reused whenever, possibly uniquely with mobility. You can have a non-damaging debuff or even just a buff that notes the target (and hopefully has at least some VFX to keep track of who it will affect despite the lack of debuff), or even just a two-stage action where the first stage comes at cost and even the second still needs the right situation to be a net gain. You can have CDs that buff you for a while but only ramp benefit from attacking the same target consecutively (or based on the greatest number of hits done to any particular target). You can have an intermediate class of cleave actions, to be used in 2-3 target situations and lock them into long enough combos or behind enough conditionals for them not to be spammed. You can have a song/MP tick system that you want to reach a certain point at a certain GCD-locked frequency. Etc., etc.

But... doing all that still only gives you a part each of what DoTs already did with seemingly less on-paper complexity to manage greater in-practice nuance. Which is why a DoT can seem a pretty thematic (re)addition to certain jobs.